Visualization of Geoscience Data on Google Earth: Development of Data Converter System for Seismic Tomography Models, Geochemical Data of Rocks, and Geomagnetic Field Models

We have developed a visualization system of multidisciplinary geoscience data exploiting Google Earth technologies. At present, our system succeeds to visualize seismic tomography models, geochemical datasets of rocks, and geomagnetic field models (Nagao et al. in GP13). As Google Earth supports the XML- based language, called KML (Keyhole Markup Language), we have developed a set of "KML generator", which converts the datasets of tomography models, petrologic or isotopic data, and datasets of geomagnetic field models to a KML file. The software consists of two components; one is the engine part to make a KML file and another is the User Interface (UI) to set the parameters for the generator. We provide not only desktop applications but also web ones as the UI of the KML generator in order that the user can easily use the KML generator through the Internet. The web applications are now available on the web site: http://www.jamstec.go.jp/pacific21. Each of the KML generators is based on GUI and has a flexible visualization scheme so that both expert and non-expert users can easily handle various geoscience data in our system. With the KML files produced from the multi-geoscience data, we can visualize a variety of research products of geoscience on the same 3D graphics of Google Earth. Therefore our visualization system would promote cross-disciplinary studies to understand our planet. We plan to develop software to convert the other type of geophysical and geochemical data formats.