One of the coolest new features on Google Maps is the ability to create “My Maps.” I geo-tagged photos and 360-degree panoramas to a Google Map from a project that explores the long-term health, environmental and economic-related effects that mining has had on parts of Kansas, Oklahoma and Missouri. Click the image above to view the interactive Google Mining Map. You can visit the original Google Map here.
As you’ll see as you zoom into the Treece and Picher areas, the towns look like a heavily bombed war-zone, with gray mounds of chat contrasting with the predominantly green agricultural region. Although the Google satellite image of the particular region could be of higher resolution, Google Earth and Google Maps provide a new way to understand and illustrate our planet’s environmental issues.
