Saturday, January 19, 2008

A planet full of WoGE


In celebration of the first anniversary of Where on (Google) Earth, I decided to have a quick look at the locations the geoblogospheroids have chosen for this highly successful quiz meme.

Below is a pie chart of the area of continents and major islands.

Compare this to the distribution of WoGE sites:

As you can see, Asia and Africa are under-represented, Antarctica is badly under-represented, while North America, Europe, and small islands are over-represented.

But there is more to geology than surface area. Below is the breakdown by tectonic regime (using the USGS plate boundary kmz file):

While “craton” here incorrectly includes the deforming interiors of several continents (Asia, Africa, North America), I’m still surprised that more sites weren’t close to active margins.

3 comments:

  1. that's cool ... I love stats like these.

    I suppose Antarctica is under-represented because people think it might be too easy? Cuz it's all ice? Not sure.

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  2. I should probably rejig the continental areas to show ice-free areas for Antarctica and Greenland...

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