Sarah Coefield
Under the category “Cool Things on the Web”, I’d like to file the Great Lakes virtual tour by NOAA’s Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory.
The tour uses a Google Earth plugin and narration to navigate the Lakes. My favorite part of the tour is the Lake Huron sinkholes by the Thunder Bay National Marine Sanctuary.
I wrote a series of articles on the sinkholes last summer, and am always pleased to give them a shout out.
The tour works fine online, but if you have Google Earth on your computer you can download the tour and make better use of some of its features. This is particularly handy if you want to watch some of the accompanying videos or check out photos. Otherwise, the site lists the videos below the plugin, so you can watch them on YouTube.
This is a great site for a refresher on some of the more interesting geologic and historical features around the Lakes. At a little more than 13 minutes it might seem like a long commitment (especially by Web standards), but I think you’ll enjoy it. You might even learn something new about our Lakes.
It looks like the laboratory is hoping folks will follow its example and make their own Great Lakes Google Earth tour. Any suggestions on what should be covered next?