Researchers on the HJ Andrews Experimental Forest Long Term Ecological Research (LTER) Site have been interested in visualizing their data using Google Earth technology. ESRI's ArcServer architecture provides a framework for developing high quality internet mapping applications that have the option of being enabled to work with Google Earth. Internet applications can then function as stand-alone applications and be integrated with Google Earth on the user's desktop. In addition, Google has recently released an application that imbeds Google Earth into a webpage, so the user does not need to download and start up Google Earth. They will need to download a small application (one time download) that will start when the web page is accessed.


This technology provides an easy to use interface with 2005 high quality color digital orthophotography (available for Oregon). The user can zoom in and out, pan, change perspective to fly through their area of interest, and add their data to the application. ArcServer services can be modified to provide subsets of data to Google Earth, and users can add the network links to their desktop. The core data is stored in the spatial data depository and the user moves seamlessly between GIS and Google Earth.