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Sunday, October 31, 2010

Using Google Earth to See Your Oil Well Location

You will be jumping back and forth between an application and your browser for this to work. It is amazingly simple. The key is to be able to download Google Earth on your computer.

1. Install Google Earth on your computer. Google Earth is an application. I leave the Google Earth icon in my dock at the bottom of my desktop (on an iMac).

2. Click the following and you will be back to your browser:  Convert section-township-range at this site. This is "Earth Point." It is free but you can pay for additional services. I am using only the free service.
  • About 1/3 down the page is: "Convert Township, Range and Section to Latitude and Longitude"
  • Use drop-down menu to click on "North Dakota"
  • Fifth Meridian will automatically be there for North Dakota (that's what you want)
  • Use drop-down menus to fill in township, range, and section
  • Then click on the "VIEW" button
  • Automatically, the longitude and latitude will show up
  • Run your cursor over the centroid longitude, latitude; it will look something like this: 48.4377284, -102.8965553 and "copy" 
3. Now, go back to Google Earth, which is an application that you downloaded in step 1; it is not in your browser; it is an application. If you put the icon in your dock at the base of your desktop, simply click on the Google Earth icon.

4. At the very top, on the left, at the Google Earth application, click on "Fly me."

5. Right below "Fly me," paste in your centroid longitude, latitude, and then hit the search magnifying glass, and Google Earth will take you directly to your section-township-range.

6. To the best of my knowledge, the photos are not dynamic; like all photographs they are dynamic and will be updated periodically. I have no control over when they will be updated.

3 comments:

  1. For the iPad:

    By the way, the Google Earth application is an "app" that can be downloaded to your iPad for free.

    For free.

    And then, do the very same thing. Technically, it's even easier, because there place to type in longitude and latitude is so incredible easy to see, you can't miss it.

    You can use your Safari browser on the iPad to go to Earth Point to convert section-township-range to longitude and latitude for the Google Earth app.

    This is truly incredible. Magical.

    ReplyDelete
  2. The images are dated, some 2009, making the data useless. How do you obtain current images?

    ReplyDelete
  3. I assume Google updates the images periodically, but I could be wrong. I doubt the images are dynamic.

    ReplyDelete

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