Climate change: Google unveils an online tool to observe soil conditions in real time

For researchers, leaders of this world, but also the general public, Google provides Dynamic World, an online application, which displays almost real-time soil changes based on environmental events.

DynamicWorld. This is the name given by Google to its new tool for exploring our planet, created in collaboration with the World Resources Institute. Kind of overlay of Google Earthwhich makes it possible to observe the earth in 3D from its mobile or his computer, this data set displays, almost in real time, the characteristics of the earth’s surface. More concretely, it is now possible to show the state of the soils, and their compositions such as treescrops or water.

Usually, designing this type of card takes time, and we are talking about weeks or even months. To achieve an almost real-time display, with more than 5,000 images added per day, Google relies on satellite images but also on artificial intelligence. In total, for each parcel of land of approximately one are (100 m²), Google displays the probability that it is covered by one of nine types of cover: water, flooded vegetation, buildingstrees, crops, bare ground, grass, shrubs/brush and snow/ice.

Objective: to observe and anticipate trends related to climate change

As Google explains in an article published by the prestigious newspaper Naturethis data is essential for researchers and world leaders to quickly observe the impacts of environmental events such as fires, floods where the hurricanes and better respond to soil changes, mainly due to climate change. In the tool, four events are pre-recorded to observe, using the mouse, before and after.

Thus, researchers can create their own maps based on the results of Dynamic World, and combine them with local information. The goal ? Google gives the example of a map to analyze harvests between particular dates, or to understand longer-term trends of seasonal changes in theecosystem.