MATIENZO CAVES Google Earth Resources (July 2008, February, May
2009, January, May, June 2011)
If you have Google Earth installed on your computer, you're familiar
with Google Earth and want to start flying around the area at once,
then download the kmz file below and double click on it.
Shows positions of archaeological sites only and / or sites documented with
biological interest and / or unexplored sites and / or sites documented as
continuing, or can be pushed and / or digging sites
Contains all (500+) cave surveys as overlays. (Latest data: January 2012)
Shows the current caving permit area
Shows all cave line surveys. (Latest data: January 2012)
Has 9 scanned maps as an overlay for the whole area
Contains 2 small scale geological maps, one by Jason Lin and the other by Juan Carlos Fernández Gutiérrez (from the Matienzo 50 book).
Shows rose diagrams of passage directions for caves over 500m length by Patrick Warren.
(Date: 2011)
Shows place and area names, ie accommodation, restaurants and bars; names
of hills and areas; positions and names of sinks and resurgences
Has a selection of Tours to fly in and around the area
High resolution surface photos - there are two ways to obtain
these. Supplied by Luis Miguel Casabona Sevillano
1: On the Matienzo server there are 9 zip files containing all the jpgs.
Each must be downloaded and expanded into the same folder, called perhaps
HiRes. When all files have been unzipped, there will be one Google Earth
file which should be double-clicked to take it into Google Earth.
2: Email me with your address and I'll post you a DVD with everything
decompressed and ready to go.
Google Earth Google Earth allows geographical information to be displayed on satellite
photos of the earth's surface. These photos can also acquire height information,
allowing the user to fly through virtual landscapes. (However, the match
between photo and underlying contours is not perfect as can be seen in a
number of places around Matienzo). In the Matienzo context, GE currently
allows entrance relationships to be seen and various subsets, eg digs, unexplored
sites, to be investigated. Google Earth allows users to import their
own data: overlays, eg a geological map, contour map or cave survey; photos;
pinpoint features, eg cave entrances, and tracks, eg cave centre lines. There
is also the facility to tour the region by following predefined (or user-defined)
paths. Once sites have been clicked on, a brief description can be given
with links to other files.
The Google Earth application sits on the user's computer and downloads
the required satellite photos when activated. To download Google Earth
click here. The Matienzo file (downloaded
above) can also sit on the user's computer or be integrated into GE for instant
access. To get the most out of the Matienzo data, some familiarity with GE
is desirable, and the remainder of the page suggests ways in which the Matienzo
file can be integrated and used with Google Earth.
The organisation of Matienzo data in Google Earth (this section not updated Jan 2011 or Jan 2012) (It may be useful to print out this section while using Google
Earth).
The sidebar in GE allows data to be structured in a file hierarchy. The way
in which the Matienzo data is organised and accessed is shown in the screenshots
below. The sidebar contains a Places panel as well as panels for
Search and Layers. The downloaded file can be double-clicked
or dragged into Google Earth. In both cases the file shows up in the
Temporary Places folder. If you intend to keep the file for future
use it should be should be immediately moved to the My Places folder:
right click on the MATIENZO file within Temporary Places and
choose Cut from the menu. Right click on the My Places folder
and click Paste on the menu. The file disappears from the Temporary
Places folder and appears in My Places.
To give a better indication of the terrain and to emphasise features, the
vertical scale should be increased to about 1.5. (This can be altered on
the top menu bar: Tools / Options and then alter the value
in the 3d View tab.) To get the best from the tours it is suggested
that the Tours tab be set to the values shown below:
Using Matienzo files in Google Earth
1: Clicking on the + or - boxes expands or closes the file
structure. (The image on the left shows that the MATIENZO folder has
been opened to show 1 file and 7 folders.) Double-clicking on MATIENZO
will zoom to the appropriate area.
A tick in any tick box displays the relevant files on the Google Earth display.
A tick against a folder will display all the files and folders within. (There
are no tick boxes marked on the left and hence no data displayed on the GE
photos. You may wish at this point to un-tick all the superfluous data in
the Layers and Places panels.)
The image also shows a slider at the bottom - this controls the transparency
of any selected item.
The two buttons start and stop a Tour.
Clicking on a pin in the main window opens up a bubble with site details
and a link to the web page description for that site.
2: One way to start up Matienzo Google Earth is to have the
mat-area-yymmdd file ticked (to show all the sites). If all the cave
lines are required then tick the Cave Lines folder which will
automatically show all four files in the folder. (4 files are currently
required due to file size restrictions on the GPS Visualiser
site). The screen shot below shows the "415 corner" with the
mat-area file activated.
3: The cave centre lines will display themselves draped over the landscape.
If the lines are given their correct altitude (in Properties) they
will (obviously) disappear underground. There is currently no way to display
detail below the surface: the satellite photos cannot be made transparent.
For a different view of the cave centre lines, the Terrain can be
turned off (in the Layers panel) and the lines then show over the
flat photos or flat contour maps overlays (or a combined view using transparency
on the various layers).
4: More than 500 Cave surveys are organised in areas
as shown on the left. Double clicking on an area name, e.g. Llueva, will
open up (or close) the folder showing / hiding all the available surveys.
At the same time GE will zoom to the extents of the surveys in the folder.
Clicking the tick box to the left of an area will show all of the surveys
as overlays on the satellite photos.
Clicking the tick box to the left of an individual survey will display that
survey.
Double clicking the number / name of a survey will prompt Google Earth to
zoom to the extent of the survey.
As with the cave lines, surveys can be draped over the landscape, but are
better viewed with the Terrain turned off.
Cave surveys can be made transparent by using the slider at the bottom of
the Places pane.
Areas are fuzzily defined and overlap, so that surveys may not be in the
expected folders, e.g. Seldesuto and North Vega or La Secada and El Naso.
Some caves are to be found on a single sheet with other sites, e.g. the South
Vega System. If the expected survey can't be found, tick the whole area and
scan through the displayed surveys.
Placing and scaling these surveys has highlighted a number of inaccuracies.
Don't expect the surveys to perfectly match the centre lines. Surveys showing
multiple entrances will almost certainly not match precisely until all entrances
are GPS'ed.
[Size, orientation and position of surveys can be adjusted by
right-clicking over a survey name in the left panel and selecting
Properties.]
5: The Map overlays folder has been opened to show
the 9 contour maps to choose from. These maps have been scanned and placed
over the GE images by hand - there are places where the maps do not match
up exactly to each other or to the underlying images. (The Google Earth
images themselves do not match perfectly in places). Individual maps can
be ticked or the Map overlays tick box chosen to select all 9 maps.
If the Cave Lines folder is chosen and visible, the Terrain
should be turned off to show a true plan view.
6: The Places folder contains 4 folders: Names/Features
is dealt with below in section 7. When Accommodation is ticked all
the contents (ie the places offering accommodation around Matienzo) are shown.
Similarly with Restaurants and Bars.
Some Hostelries have all three symbols.
7: Names/Features contains a draft Hydrology folder containing
Sinks and Resurgences folders. The remaining folders name surface
features and areas in various categories.
Ticking Names/Features will activate all the folders and files lower
down in the file structure. Ticking just Hills will only show the
names of the summits around the depression.
8: The Sites folder contains 5 files which show subsets of the
data, ie unexplored sites (mat-unex-yymmdd), unfinished sites with
leads to push (mat-cont-yymmdd), archaeological sites
(mat-arch-yymmdd), sites with biological interest
(mat-biol-yymmdd) and digs (mat-digs-yymmdd).
For example, if only sites with archaeological interest are required, then
un-tick the mat-area-yymmdd file (in the MATIENZO folder) and
choose the mat-arch-yymmdd file inside the Sites folder.
There is no point in having mat-area and the Sites folder ticked
as most sites will be duplicated on screen, slowing up the computer.
9: The Tours folder contains a number of pre-defined tours or
fly-arounds. When activated, GE follows an invisible path or line. (Even
though the S Vega circle tour is ticked, nothing is seen on the screen
as the line is zero width). The user can also define his or her own path
and hence devise a tour. (I'd like to include more in this section!)
To activate a Tour, click on the description, eg S Vega circle and
either press ctrl-Alt-P or click the arrow symbol at the base of the
Places panel. A tour can be stopped by clicking the square or by pressing
ctrl-Alt-P.
Various tours parameters are controlled by the Google Earth
Optionswindow shown above, and these values should be used when
touring on these paths.
10: Other hints and tips:
Double-clicking on the file or folder name in the Places panel makes
Google Earth zoom to the relevant area
Right-clicking on a file name, track or site gives a menu from where it is
possible to change properties. Tracks (cave lines) can have a colour change
or have the track extended to the ground - not very useful?
If you mess up completely, the MATIENZO file can be deleted in My
Places from the right-click menu and then re-loaded.
It doesn't seem possible to search for a site, e.g. Vallina, (they don't
appear in the top, Search panel) but scrolling down in the
Places panel with the mat-area-yymmdd file expanded and
double-clicking on site 773 will zoom into the Vallina area with the
entrance centred in the map window.
It may be useful to have an alternative file in alphabetical order.
It would also be possible to have a file that showed numbers and names on
the pins, although this likely to overcrowd the screen.
In addition, GE will also give driving directions (on known roads) to any
restaurant, cave, resurgence, etc. Right-clicking on a screen pin or label
in the Places window will often give the opportunity to click
Directions from here or Directions to here. The appropriate
box in the top Search panel will be filled with the correct lat /
long. A similar process will then fill in the other box. As an example, try
"site 733 Vallina" (directions to) and "Bar La Panaderia" (directions
from). When both boxes are complete, the route is calculated and shown
on screen. The route can also be followed (as a tour) by clicking the arrow
button at the base of the Search panel.
11: The different coloured and lettered pin meanings are fairly
obvious and shown below. Some sites can be two or more, for example,
archaeological sites and digs - but only one symbol is shown. This also explains
why the mat-arch file has pins other than pink "A"s.
Marker
Meaning
Pink pin, marked "A" with white text
Sites with archaeological interest.
Orange triangle with yellow text
Unfinished sites with leads to push
Cyan pin, marked "D" with cyan text
Digging sites, either above or below ground
Grey circle with grey text
Sites which are "finished" (according to the database) and which aren't
categorised elsewhere.
Red pin, marked "U" with red text
Unexplored sites
Flying and Touring
It is well worth while spending a few hours (!) exploring the capabilities
of the Google Earth application.
There are two methods of flying: ctrl-G gives a joy stick approach,
while ctrl-T is the default which is used. Possibly the best way to
fly around the depression is to use the compass at the top right and to drag
the centre circle in the required direction. A height of 1.5km (allowing
for the vertical exaggeration of 1.5) allows a gentle glide over the depression
with Muela, Mullir and the Hoya de Yusa depression very noticeable. If the
ground appears flat, make sure the Terrain is activated.
Any set of chosen points can be toured, ie a flight made to each point in
turn with the bubble appearing for a couple of seconds (if your Options are
set correctly). For example, with all sites showing (mat-area ticked)
but the mat-arch file chosen (single click on the file name - the
file is highlighted) the Tour is activated by clicking on the arrow triangle
at the base of the Places panel. The archaeological sites are visited
amongst all the others. The tour can be paused and web site descriptions
investigated.
Feedback and Future Development
As with Footleg's Google Map feature, these Google Earth resources
are in active development. If you have any suggestions for enhancements or
spot any errors or suspect data then please email the Matienzo Google Group.
Let us have your ideas.
I'll start the list for version 1.1 with
- Provide a link in the balloon to the Survex 3d file
- Provide a proper hydrological layer with proven / postulated water
routes
