Tuesday, June 19, 2007

SPOILERS for Where on (Google) Earth #16

The original post is here.

If you are still working on it, stop reading now.

I recommend going to Ron's site, and having a go yourself before reading the spoilers.

If you know geology, it is actually fairly easy to deduce where the answer has to be.

Go ahead. Have a look.

I will talk you guys through the process below.

My first gut feeling was the Tarim Basin, but before running off to Asia, I decided to look at the pic analytically.

Ron's fatal mistake was adding the oblique view. While this looks mostly like a gimmick, it gave crucial information- namely the presence of snow-capped mountains to the East of the view area.

Also, there are no folded strata visible. Finally, the mountain looks like an eroded volcano. The obvious place to look for arid volcanic landscapes with higher mountains to the East is the Atacama desert. So, I started around 24 deg south, and worked my way up the coast into southern Peru, where the shore starts getting much less arid.

I had no joy, but I was confident in my reasoning, so I came back down along the dividing range, and look what I found...



22o54'S 67o13' West

I have no idea what the groundwater eroding ash canyons are called, but the meandering thing is a river.

4 comments:

Ron Schott said...

We are not worthy!!!

BrianR said...

nice work...

i'm gonna be out of town and away from the internet for 10 days starting on Thursday...so, go crazy with WoGE and i'll try and catch up when i return

on another note, i was thinking last night, that at some point it would be cool to compile the placemarks for all the WoGE sites and distribute a .kmz file ... especially if the sites have info attached to them and maybe a link to the blog posts....something to think about when WoGE gets to #50 or #100 someday

C W Magee said...

Are you guys happy with a "winner posts the next one" approach for the next little while?

Ron Schott said...

@Brian: I'm already working on a folder of WoGE placemarks - I'd be happy to turn it into a Network Link.

@Chuck: I like the winner posts approach... you're up. I think that we need to make a pointer from the comments section of the prior one each time we post, though, so everyone knows where to look next.