How an Ethnobotanist might use Google Earth

1. Reading a paper in Economic Botany, you wonder where the place is and what it is like.  You would even like to see pictures of the place since there were none in the article.
   
2. You are thinking of going to a new field location and you want to check out the area before you go.  What is the topography?  How big is the nearest city?  How is the city laid out?  What about street trees?  How well is the city served by trains?  How far way is a major airport?
   
3. Determining key locations in a place you will be doing studies will let you load the coordinates into your GPS for navigation and safety.
4. It is important to know some key distances in a field site, such as the size of some fields and the distances to a market.
5. A collaborator at another institution is interested in some of your photos and you want to post them in the context of the locations at which they were taken.
6. There is a meeting at a place you’ve not been to before. You not only want to check the route but also get an idea of what the place you are going looks like.
7. A GPS track has been saved that records all the places that you went during one day of your expedition. You want to see this track in a familiar context.
8. A map of the population density of your study region has become available on the Internet. You want to see how this relates to the topography, rivers, and highway network.
9. Information has been compiled about characteristics of each village. You want to mark villages with a colored indicator so you can see the spatial arrangement of the data.
10. The plants that you are studying are relatively rare.  You want to keep track of the plant locations with easily recognized symbols to represent the general size of each individual.
11. You are planning an expedition to an area and want to search for a likely area to establish a transect over a known elevation range.
12. A preliminary vegetation map will help your research by allowing you to divide the study area into major units.  
13. A map of your study area is needed in a publication you are preparing.
14. Placing data values in the topographic context of your study area will help you convey a key concept in a seminar presentation.
15. Planning a field expedition is resulting in a lot of place-specific information.  Storing this information in a spatial context will help you visualize the logistical challenges.
16. You need to purchase supplies and equipment in an unfamiliar major city.  A good map with driving directions will expedite your shopping.
17. A colleague has given you step-by-step instructions to find your way to a meeting site.  You'd like to check these instructions, particularly so you can visualize the context.
18. An herbarium specimen has a location noted as the distance along a road from a village.  You'd like to check the site to see if it is likely that the plant is still there before you actually travel to the location.