A new high-resolution, interactive map of U.S. carbon dioxide
emissions from fossil fuels is now available on Google Earth.
With a few clicks on Google Earth, anyone can now view pollution from factories, power
plants, roadways, and residential and commercial areas for their state, county or per capita. Individuals also can easily see how their county compares to others across the nation.
A team led by scientists at Purdue University developed the maps and system, named Vulcan
after the Roman god of fire. The system quantifies all of the carbon dioxide emissions that result
from burning fossil fuels such as coal and gasoline.
Kevin Gurney, who leads the project, said Vulcan helps demystify the connection between
fossil fuel use and climate change.
"This will bring emissions information into everyone’s living room as a recognizable,
accessible online experience," said Gurney, who is an assistant professor of earth and atmospheric
sciences. "What was once the realm of scientists will now be provided directly to the public. We
hope to eventually turn it into an interactive space where the public will feed information into the
system to create an even finer picture of emissions down to the street and individual building level."
The three-year project involved researchers from Purdue University, Colorado State
University and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. The project was funded by NASA and the
U.S. Department of Energy with additional support from the Purdue Showalter Trust and
Indianapolis-based Knauf Insulation.
Simon Ilyushchenko, an engineer at Google, volunteered his time to create the Vulcan layer.
Google engineers are allowed to donate 20 percent of their time, or one day of their workweek, to a
cause or project of their choice.
As he sought information about climate change, Ilyushchenko said it was difficult to find
detailed data at the level of an individual’s impact and how different locations compare to one
another. He became interested in the Vulcan project after it was first released as a tool for the
scientific community in April 2007.
"Vulcan had great information, but was not easy for a non-scientist to analyze and
understand," Ilyushchenko said. "Integrating the data with Google Earth was a way to advance
public understanding of fossil fuel energy usage. Dynamic maps of the data, broken down by the
different sources of emissions, easily show where people burn more gasoline from driving or where
they use more fuel for heating and cooling homes and businesses."
The Vulcan layer on Google Earth shows carbon dioxide emissions in metric tons at the state
level, county level and per capita. It also breaks down emissions by the different sectors responsible
for the emissions, including aircraft, commercial, electricity production, industrial, residential and
transport.
The current emissions are based on information from 2002, but the Vulcan system will soon
expand to more recent years. Gurney’s team would like to fill in information from 1985 to the
present and then update the data every six months, he said.
"This is the first step," Gurney said. "We’ll keep adding more information to enrich it. We
hope to eventually get feedback from the public about energy use and activity that allows us to
include even more detailed information. This would create a network of businesses and individuals
that would become part of the Vulcan system and part of the scientific effort."
Gurney said the Google Earth content will continually grow as the detail of the data-gathering effort improves.
Next the team plans to gather even finer detail with the goal of being able to have emissions
data at the street level. The team also plans to expand Vulcan to other countries, beginning with
Canada and Mexico.
Loading...