Recently, Washtenaw County, Michigan embarked on a major stream bank erosion control project.  When that project entered heavily forested residential lands adjacent to a creek, environmentally-sensitive residents quite naturally became concerned for the trees and wildlife that will be destroyed or disturbed.   The project is still on-going and the geosocial network described below remains in place.

The County coded its easement with pink flags.  It tagged selected large trees or otherwise interesting vegetation with a blue band if they were to be removed; it tagged trees within the easement with a red band if they were to be left alone.  All vegetation within the easement, except trees or shrubs carrying red tags, were to be removed.  Color was critical—a simple red/blue confusion could cost a tree its life!

The geotagged camera images were downloaded directly to a computer by plugging the smartphone into a recent Windows 7 desktop computer.  All 81 images were stored in a single folder.  That folder was then uploaded to the free software called “GeoSetter.”  From there, the geotagged images were batch-uploaded to Google Earth in a single operation (rather than entering each one individually).  The GeoSetter software was able to take the underlying geocoded coordinates from the camera images, as well as the images themselves, and make them correspond to the underlying coordinate geometry in Google Earth.  We made color decisions to correspond with the actual colors of tags used on vegetation. 

Accuracy, of registration of photo and Google Earth coordinates, using this sort of strategy was guaranteed.  Hand placement would not offer that level of accuracy of registration. Overall, the results were sufficiently precise (although not accurate) to offer local residents a clear picture of what was going to happen in wooded areas.  When the camera GPS coordinates were obtained, a photo of the tagged item was also taken.  Figure 2 shows a photo displayed on the Google Earth surface pointing to the identified red-tagged tree.   Figure 3 shows a similar configuration of photo in relation to Google Earth base pointing to the identified blue-tagged tree.  These pointing associations are all accurate.  Download the linked .kmz file, open it in Google Earth, and you will see associations of this sort for all 81 trees marked by the County before the time of photographing.

• Friedemann Schmidt.  GeoSetter.  Last accessed June 15, 2012:  http://www.geosetter.de/en/
  

• Geosocial Networking, Wikipedia.  Last accessed June 15, 2012: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geosocial_networking

• Google Earth.  Last accessed June 15, 2012: http://www.google.com/earth/index.html
  

• Washtenaw County.  Mallett's Creek Restoration Project:  Final Report.  Last accessed June 15, 2012: http://www.ewashtenaw.org/government/drain_commissioner/dc_webWaterQuality/malletts_creek/dc_mc_mcrp.html