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Forests are the mighty lungs of our planet. They absorb carbon dioxide, and emit oxygen on which all people and animals on Earth rely. For the sake of our future, it is critical that all people, including the next generation, understand our global forests in order to manage them sustainably. Today, Science in the Classroom, Dr. Matt Hansen of the University of Maryland, and Google Earth Engine are presenting Global Forest Change Explorer to help engage young people in forest conservation.

The Global Forest Change Explorer website contains maps that are available for interactive analysis as well as an accompanying activity worksheet. The Explorer Tool allows students to quickly visualize trends in forest loss and gain, compare different countries and ecoregions, and apply the forest data to try to predict underlying causes where there is significant change in forest density. The Explorer Tool relies on open data that is used by remote sensing and GIS professionals in their work.

A number of years ago, Dr. Matt Hansen and a team of researchers at the University of Maryland turned to Google Earth Engine to map high-resolution global forest cover with Earth Engine’s cloud-based image processing and computing. The team mapped global forest loss and gain from 2000 to 2012 at 30-meter resolution for the entire globe. In 2013, the methods and results were published in Science Magazine and online for everyone to explore. These findings are now an important part of the website Global Forest Watch, which gives governments and decision makers free access to the data and tools required to monitor and manage their forests.

Science in the Classroom (SitC) thought this was great research to bring into the classroom and make available to anyone online. SitC packages annotated research papers with supplemental teaching materials to help pre-college and college students understand the structure and workings of scientific research. SitC and Google Earth Engine built the Global Forest Change Explorer to make Dr. Hansen’s data accessible to a younger audience.

We live in a dynamic world where the pressures of population growth increasingly impact and threaten our forests. However, as technology, open data, and people continue to mobilize, we are given more tools to research the health of our planet. Educators can easily flip their classrooms into science labs by combining SitC materials with Global Forest Change Explorer. With these tools, students will leave sessions with richer understanding of environmental change, more curiosity, and a desire to actively participate in protecting our forests.

Get started with Global Forest Change Explorer today!

Posted by Emily Henderson, Google Geo Education Outreach

It’s almost here. The first three-day weekend after the longest stretch of the year without a paid holiday—and the unofficial start of summer. With nearly 34 million people expected to hit the roads and travel more than 50 miles this Memorial Day weekend, travelers just might need some assistance getting where they’re going, beating the crowds and exploring once there. With Google Maps as your copilot you’ll have a leg up on the road tripping competition. Here are some Google Maps features and time-saving tips to help ace your long weekend road trip:

Searching within Navigation: Make quick pit stops without long detours. Search for places along your route without ever leaving navigation mode. Once in navigation mode, just tap the magnifying glass and then tap a category like “gas stations” and see real-time gas prices or “restaurants” to see dining options close to you. Tap “search for more places” to search for a venue outside the preset categories. And no matter what you search for, you’re alerted to how much detour time the stop will add to your trip. Available on iPhone and Android

Offline Maps: Search for places, get directions, and turn-by-turn navigation even when you hit a dead zone. Before you leave and still have a wifi connection, just download the region you’ll be traveling within for an uninterrupted navigation experience once you hit the road. Available on Android and iPhone

Real-time Traffic Alerts and Dynamic Rerouting: Google Maps gives you the best and fastest route based on current and historic traffic conditions. When you Input a destination, you get alerted about upcoming traffic conditions. And while on the road, Google Maps gives you a heads up if congestion lies ahead along with an estimate of how long the delay will be. You’ll also get suggestions for an alternative route (if a faster one is available) with an explanation for why it’s recommended. Available on Android and iPhone

Toll and Ferry Notifications: Never get caught without exact change again. You’ll see a toll icon when your route includes toll roads and you’ll see a ferry icon if your route requires you to take a ferry. To avoid tolls and ferries completely, select “Route options” when you search for driving directions and check off the categories you want to avoid. Available on Android and iPhone

Explore: Once you get to your destination, open Google Maps and tap “Explore food & drinks near you” at the bottom of the screen. Based on the time of day, you’ll see relevant lists of food and drink locations nearby. Available on Android and rolling out to iPhone users in the US, UK, Japan, France, Germany, Italy and Spain now

Now that you’ve got the scoop on road trip-friendly features, get familiar with some time-saving tips. Master these simple hacks and you’ll practically be a Google Maps ninja.

• Shift into navigation mode faster: You can access navigation mode in Maps (turn-by-turn directions and dictation) by tapping and holding the car, bike, or walk icon in the bottom right corner of your phone screen. Available on Android and iPhone
• Get oriented with one tap: Tap the compass in the top right corner of your screen, and the map will shift to match the direction you’re facing. Available on Android and iPhone
• Try the one-handed zoom: If you’ve only got one hand free, you can still zoom into your map—just double tap the screen and swipe up or down to zoom in and out. Available on Android and iPhone
• Quickly access Street View on the go: On your phone, long press somewhere on the map to drop a pin, search for a place, or select a location already shown. Tap the bar at the bottom of the screen and then tap again on the image with the 360 degree arrow in the bottom left hand corner to enter Street View mode. To take a look around your destination just swipe around the Street View image. Available on Android and iPhone

Posted by Amanda Leicht Moore, Google Maps Product Manager

Posted by Ken Hoetmer, Product Manager, Google Maps APIs

Day 1 done! We had a great first day at Google I/O—more than 800 developers visited our Geo sandbox to check out apps, play with 360 degree cameras and most importantly, chat with our engineers, product managers, and developer advocates about the apps they’re building.

The Geo sandbox features Sugarbear, a 1959 PD-4104 General Motors Coach that measures 35’ long by 8’ wide with a diesel engine outfitted for biodiesel. Sugarbear made an epic trip across the USA after last year’s I/O and we’ve brought her back this year for more demo fun. You can engage with interactive maps experiences and check out customer applications inside the bus. Climb Yosemite’s El Capitan, calculate your solar potential with Project Sunroof, and see how Nest and the Environmental Defense Fund use location data to make our lives better. Sugarbear also features Google Maps APIs customers Trucker Path, Zendrive, Postmates, GTX Corp and Vagabond.

The Google I/O event shuttle buses are also being tracked and visualized in real time by an app we built using Firebase and Google Maps APIs. Within the Geo sandbox you can check out the app on the big screen and chat with the developers about how it works on the inside (hint: ask for Brett).

Geo also hosted one session yesterday: Location and Proximity Superpowers: Eddystone + Google Beacon Platform and we have several additional sessions on Thursday and Friday, including Understand your Place in this world and Building geo services that scale.

Finally, don’t forget about our office hours—scheduled for Thursday, May 19 at 4pm. We’ll be in the tent for an hour…bring your Maps and Location questions for our Product Managers and Developer Advocates.

Posted by Jac de Haan, Developer Marketing for the Google Maps APIs

Google I/O starts in just 24 hours! We’re looking forward to three days of insightful developer conversations, amazing technology and great weather. This year, Google Maps APIs engineers, technical support engineers, product managers, ux-ers, technical writers and developer advocates are traveling from Sydney, New York and Seattle to spend time in the Geo sandbox and demonstrate the power of our APIs. We’ll also hold Office Hours to answer your implementation questions.

Here are three of our featured sessions for this year’s event:

Understand your place in this world
May 19, 9:00 AM
Humans navigate a world made up of places with names, addresses and phone numbers—not lat/long coordinates. The Google Places API enables an app or website to present location data to users in a human-friendly fashion. In this session we’ll do a deep dive into how you can use the Places API to discover your environment. We’ll give detailed insights into how to use the APIs on web and mobile, show off some newly-released widgets, and take a look at how you can optimize for mobile device battery life. You’ll learn how the Places API can make all your apps— not just map-centric ones—smarter.

Building geo services that scale
May 19, 2:00 PM
Not all map and geo applications run entirely on your mobile device. Perhaps you want to protect your keys or other API access data from reverse engineering by putting them in the cloud, or you have custom business logic that you run on your server that you don’t want to distribute via mobile. To protect your keys and API access data you’ll need to operate some kind of service. In this session you’ll learn how to build that service on the Google Cloud Platform and consume it in a mobile application that uses the Google Maps APIs.


Streamlining developer experiences with the Google Maps APIs
May 20, 9:00 AM
The Google Maps APIs provide a seamless experience for developers of all levels. Some want to offer a map or navigation but don’t want to build these things themselves; this can be achieved with just a few lines of code. Other developers prefer to integrate natively with off-the-shelf widgets. Finally, some developers want complete control over every aspect of the presentation. This session will highlight the Maps APIs representing the full gamut of the developer experiences, enabling you to get going immediately and scale as necessary. You’ll see how widgets and services can be added over time with a suite of Maps APIs, services and libraries.

We hope you’re able to attend at least one of these sessions to learn directly from Google Maps APIs experts. And, don’t forget to stop by the Geo sandbox to chat—just look for the big bus! If you’re not able to join us in person this year, you can always keep up with our activities via Twitter or G+.

Posted by Sarah Maddox, technical writer for the Google Maps APIs

The Google Maps APIs team are keen to ensure that our customers and developer community has the most up to date and useful information about using our APIs. With that goal in mind, we’ve added RSS feeds to the Release Notes for all the Maps and Places APIs.

Until now, if you wanted to see news about our releases, you’d need to visit individual API release notes pages periodically. We don’t typically announce bug-fix or other small releases via the blog or social media but these are often critical for segments of our developer community.

You can now subscribe to individual API feeds and receive updates automatically when release notes are published. We’ll continue to publish all Release Notes on the website as well. Feeds available today:
Google Maps Android API 
Google Maps SDK for iOS 
Google Maps JavaScript API 
Google Maps Directions API 
Google Maps Distance Matrix API 
Google Places API for Android 
Google Places API for iOS 
Google Maps Android API Premium Plan 
Google Maps SDK for iOS Premium Plan 

I’ve been a technical writer at Google since 2013. I love my job because it gives me the opportunity to play with code and words, and to make them play nicely with each other. Maps are beautiful, and the docs help people weave stories around geography and places.

I’ll be at I/O next week, so I hope to see you there at our Geo sandbox (just look for the bus). Happy mapping!

Have you ever wondered what it’s like to side across a glacier? Or how it feels to stretch your arms beneath a waterfall? Well, now you can see for yourself. In its more than 2.7 million square kilometers, Argentina is home of some of the most spectacular natural settings on the globe. Starting today in Street View, you can experience a selection of Argentina’s most breathtaking national parks right from your Google Maps app for Android or iOS.

Standing at the foot of breathtaking falls in the Parque Nacional Iguazú, you can almost feel the mist swirling around you. Not to be missed, the Iguazú waterfalls are one of the New7Wonders of Nature.

No trip to Argentina is complete without gazing at the glorious Perito Moreno Glacier in the Los Glaciares National Park. The ice is 30 km in length and is one of 48 glaciers fed by the Southern Patagonian Ice Field—the world’s third largest reserve of fresh water.

This is only the tip of the iceberg (or should we say glacier?). Experience even more of Argentina in Street View in Google Maps in our Street View Gallery.

Posted by Maite Iturria Arrospide, Program Manager for Google Maps

More than 10,000 athletes, half a million travelers and tens of thousands of volunteers are expected to join the roughly 6 million residents of Rio de Janeiro this summer for the 2016 Olympic Games. Over the next few months we’re making a variety of updates and additions to Google Maps to ensure Rio residents and visitors alike can easily get around once the torch is in town.

A few weeks ago we launched real-time transit in Rio de Janeiro. Now for the first time ever, you’ll be able to see indoor maps for 25 official indoor venues and enhanced outdoor maps of 12 official outdoor venues of the upcoming Olympic Games on Google Maps for desktop, Android and iOS.

Using indoor maps is easy. Just open Google Maps on your computer or mobile phone, search for a place that has indoor maps, zoom into the place, and click on it. At the bottom right side of the screen, choose among the floors and levels of the building. Points of interest like concessions, restrooms, information desks, and ATM machines are highlighted for easy identification.

Whether planning to attend the Games or just daydreaming about an Olympic getaway, you can view indoor maps of the venues on Google Maps. Here’s a sneak peek:

The opening ceremony will kick off the Games at the iconic Maracanã, where matches for one of the most popular events will take place—fútbol.

The new Future Arena will house handball games. Eventually, it will be taken apart and repurposed to build four public schools.

Golf is back at the Olympics after a 112-year hiatus. The competition will take place at the custom made 18-hole Olympic Golf Course.

Not heading to the Olympics? Don’t worry. With more than 3 billion square feet of indoor maps globally, Google Maps can help you get around the venues you’re visiting this summer—whether you’re cheering on the athletes in Rio, or closer to home.

Posted by Marcus Leal, Google Maps Product Manager, Latin America

To celebrate National Travel and Tourism Week, Google Maps is releasing some new scenic Street View sights across the US collected with our partners in the Trekker Loan Program. In anticipation of the warm summer months ahead, discover and explore botanical gardens tours, historic boardwalks cruises and stunning city views all in your Google Maps app for Android and iOS.

Beginning our tour in Texas, working with our partners at the Austin Convention and Visitors Bureau, you can take a summer dip in the pristine Hamilton Pool, a popular swimming hole for tourists and residents alike. Heading west to El Paso with our partners at Visit El Paso, you can take a breathtaking walk through Hueco Tanks State Park, where rock climbers and hikers delight in the winding trails through canyons filled with unique bird species and botanicals. And for those in Houston, a stroll through Hermann Park thanks to Houston Parks Board, provides a scenic getaway in the heart of the city where visitors can enjoy a bit of recreation and relaxation.

Heading east, you’ll find Mississippi’s scenic summer offerings from our partners at Visit Mississippi Gulf Coast. First you can enjoy the natural beauty of the Mississippi Sandhill Crane National Wildlife Refuge, where the endangered sandhill cranes hail during their migration patterns. You can also enjoy the afternoon sun at the Pascagoula Beach Park and Recreation Area.

End your tour in the northwest, where national parks are plentiful and the natural views will leave you breathless. In Oregon, with our partners at Travel Lane County, you can see the Heceta Head Lighthouse, the most photographed lighthouse on the West Coast. Then see if you can uncover the winding trail to Salt Creek Falls, Oregon’s second tallest waterfall.

America’s unique history and beauty make it a great destination. To see more sites, explore our U.S. Highlights Gallery.

Posted by Posted by Susan Cadrecha, Google Maps Communications Manager

Perched on Bennelong Point in Sydney Harbour, the Sydney Opera House is an Australian icon. Visited by millions of people each year, this architectural masterpiece can now be explored right from your Android or iPhone in Google Maps with the launch of the Sydney Opera House on Street View.

With this new collection, you can stand on the steps of the Opera House and gaze at the white sails, look out at Sydney’s Harbour Bridge, or take in the hustle and bustle of Circular Quay in 360-degree panoramic imagery from wherever you are.

Feel what it’s like to stand on the stage of the Concert Hall and look up at the acoustic clouds.

And go behind-the-scenes to spaces rarely seen by the public, like the stage of the Joan Sutherland Theatre.

Or see the impressive tapestry designed by the Sydney Opera House’s architect Jørn Utzon, which hangs in the room now named after him and overlooking Sydney Harbour.

Today’s new Street View collection is part of the opening of the Sydney Opera House on the Google Cultural Institute. To access this imagery, search for Sydney Opera House in Google Maps for mobile (available for both Android and iOS), and select the Street View option to enter your own 360-degree tour. We hope you enjoy exploring this Heritage listed site with Street View.

Posted by Cynthia Wei, Street View Program Manager Asia Pacific

We want to create technology that helps millions of others understand our changing world and live more sustainably—whether it’s connecting people with public transit routes, or using the data that powers Google Earth to help you see if your roof is good for solar panels. In honor of Earth Day this month, we’ve gathered together some of the ways Google can help you reduce your everyday emissions and learn more about preserving our world.

Monitoring forests and wildlife
Google Earth satellite technology gives scientists and environmentalists a way to measure and visualize changes of the world on both land and water. This technology can have great impact on monitoring endangered animal populations around the world. For example, with the help of Global Forest Watch, powered by Google Earth Engine, scientists at the University of Minnesota are suggesting that wild tiger populations may rebound by 2022, due to the efforts to restore tiger habitats in key regions.

Anyone can now view tiger conservation areas (in orange and yellow above) using Global Forest Watch

Going solar
Looking to generate clean energy savings with solar power on your home? Check out Project Sunroof, a solar calculator that estimates the impact and potential savings of installing solar on the roof of your home. Taking Google Earth imagery and overlaying annual sun exposure and weather patterns, Sunroof is able to assess viable roof space for solar panel installation, estimate the value of solar and savings based on local energy costs, and connect you with providers of solar panels in your area.

As of this week, Sunroof expanded to 42 states across the U.S. (from 10 states in December), which makes imagery and data available for a solar analysis to 43 million rooftops. We’re also working with organizations like Sierra Club and their Ready for 100 campaign to help analyze the solar potential of cities across the US.

Project Sunroof shows you the solar potential of your home and city, allowing you to realize its renewable potential. The image on the right shows how much sunshine Denver, CO residents can capture with solar.
Measuring air pollutants
For the past few years, Google Earth Outreach and the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) have been working together to map methane leaks from natural gas pipelines under our streets. Since methane is a very potent greenhouse gas (GHG), even small leaks can add up to big emissions that can hurt our climate. By attaching methane analyzers to select Street View cars, we’ve driven more than 7,500 miles and have mapped 4,200+ leaks in 10 cities. What we found ranges from an average of one leak per mile (in Boston) to one leak every 200 miles (in Indianapolis), demonstrating the effectiveness of techniques like using plastic piping instead of steel for pipeline construction. We hope utilities can use this data to prioritize the replacement of gas mains and service lines (like New Jersey’s PSE&G announced last fall). We’re also partnering with Aclima to measure many more pollutants with Street View cars in California communities through this year.

Anyone can explore the maps at www.edf.org/methanemaps

Technology is crucial to increasing energy efficiency, raising climate change awareness, and sustainability efforts. To learn more about what you can do to help, take a moment to explore our Google Earth Outreach site, where these tools and more are described in depth.

Posted by Rebecca Moore, Engineering Director, Google Earth, Earth Engine & Outreach

Last week we launched the Google Maps SDK for iOS 1.13. This release includes the ability to create advanced marker animations, the option of auto refreshing info windows, the ability to set the frame rate up to 60 frames per second, further custom styling for the Place Autocomplete widget, and a new mapViewSnapshotReady event.

Advanced marker animations and auto-refreshing of info windows

Ever wanted to have rotating markers or use a grow and glow marker animation?

With the Google Maps SDK for iOS 1.13, we have introduced an iconView property for marker icons, giving you the animation capabilities of a UIView. Because iconView accepts a UIView, you can have a hierarchy of standard UI controls defining your markers, each view having the standard set of animation capabilities. The iconView property supports animation of all animatable properties of UIView except frame and center. Take a look at our documentation to get started.

We’ve also included the option to auto-refresh info windows, which is particularly useful if you want to use a static web page as info window content but it hasn’t downloaded by the time you create your info window. By using the new marker property tracksInfoWindowChanges, you can have the info window automatically refresh when the static web page loads.

Frame rate up to 60 fps with graceful fallback

You can now take advantage of a new enum, GMSFrameRate, which has three options: kGMSFrameRatePowerSave (15fps), kGMSFrameRateConservative (30fps), and the default kGMSFrameRateMaximum (60fps with 30fps fallback). In order to protect devices that don’t handle 60fps well, we do a run-time device model check and the preferredFrameRate is silently downgraded to 30fps when necessary on older devices.

Autocomplete widget styling

In Google Maps SDK for iOS 1.12 we announced the iOS Places autocomplete widget. With the release of iOS 1.13, you can now add further custom styling to your autocomplete widget to create a consistent visual identity.

To set widget UI element colors:

1. Use the native iOS Appearance Proxy system when possible to globally style UI controls. The Places autocomplete widget will honor these settings.
2. Use the new SDK methods on widget classes to set colors which the Appearance Proxy system doesn’t support.

Our documentation highlights which elements can be customized using the Appearance Proxy, and which can be customized by using the SDK methods.

mapViewSnapshotReady event

We heard your requests to provide a clear signal that all tiles have been rendered and the map has finished loading. In Google Maps SDK for iOS 1.11 we included start/finish events for map tile and Street View panorama rendering.

In this release, we’ve added a mapViewSnapshotReady event that indicates that the map is stable (tiles loaded, labels rendered, camera idle) and overlay objects have been rendered. This is useful if you want to do a transition away from the map, but need a static image of the map in case you want to transition back. The mapViewSnapshotReady event will ensure that the static image will truly represent the state of the map.

A big thank you to iOS developers for using the Google Maps SDK and submitting feedback via the issue tracker!

Take a look at our release notes and update to Google Maps SDK for iOS 1.13 today.

Posted by Megan Boundey, Product Manager, Google Maps Mobile APIs

Have you ever dreamed of living in a treehouse? Maybe an igloo or a farm house? Or how about an RV—free to go wherever your wheels take you? Whatever your dream home may be, Google Maps can help make it a little less make-believe. Starting today you can customize your home and work addresses in Google Maps on Android with stickers, so your map is a little more you.

There are many benefits to saving your home and work addresses in Google Maps. You can use the new driving mode for one-tap access to driving directions from your home screen. If you use public transportation to commute, you can stop guessing when the train will arrive with quick access to real-time transportation information.

Home and work are not the only places you can label in Google Maps. For example, if you look up the best route to avoid traffic on your way to your kid’s school, or to see when the next bus is coming to get to your friend’s house for your favorite sitcom every Thursday, or the gym on Mondays and Wednesdays, you can now label these places for quick access to directions, traffic conditions, best routes and more.

To save home and work addresses and other destinations, just make sure you’re signed into your Google account. Then visit the Your Places tab or type an address, then label it. Once setup, you can just type “home”, “work” or “gym” in the search bar to get directions and navigate quickly and easily from wherever you are.

What’s your dream home? If you’re a prince or princess, your castle awaits you.

Posted By: Beth Findley, Software Engineer Google Map

Navigating within major cities is never easy—it can take precious minutes to figure out whether it’s faster to hop on a bus, walk a few blocks, find a ride-sharing service, or hail a taxi. Starting today, it’s easier. When you search for directions using Google Maps on your iOS or Android device, we’ll show you a dedicated tab with information for ride services—in addition to the existing car, transit, walking, or biking options you’re familiar with. So when you’re leaving work to meet a friend for dinner, you can easily compare your options to find the fastest way there, without having to open multiple apps.

In addition to our existing global ride service partner Uber, with this update we’ve added new providers across five countries: 99Taxis in Brazil, Ola Cabs in India, Hailo in the UK and Spain, mytaxi in Germany and Spain, and Gett in the UK.

If you have a provider’s app installed and tap on the ride service tab, you’ll be able to see fare estimates and pick up times if a car is available near you. Select a service, and we’ll take you directly to their app for you to book your ride with one tap. When it makes sense, we’ll also show ride service availability when viewing the map in walking and transit directions, and multiple ride services options for each provider—where they exist. For example, if you’re using Uber, starting today, we’ll now show uberX, uberXL and UberBLACK for an easy and quick comparison.

UPDATED 3/24/16: The feature is now available on both Android and iOS. So next time you’re looking to move around a city, open Google Maps on your phone to figure out your fastest mode of transport to get where you’re headed.

Posted by Holger Flier, Software Engineer