Finally, I have used the path tool to indicatewhere I would like to place windbreaks. Other water features I have chosen to plan for in my design with the path tool are swales, and diversion drainage systems. Aside from representing my access (roads, paths, secondary ancillary paths, etc.), I have used the path tool to highlight both contemporary stream flows, and streams that will evolve from ephemeral to permanent upon restoration. You certainly can do just that if you’d like, and you likely will if you choose to use GEP for your design, but that’s certainly not all it can be used for! The benefit of the path tool when compared to the line tool is that you can add zig, zag, go back and forth, and introduce smooth sinusoidal curves. The path tool comes next, which as the name suggests draws a path. Obviously, I won’t be building anything that I want to last for a while in these areas! One other utility for the polygon tool is the placement of ponds, which is largely helped out by some third-party software (again, I’ll get into this in a bit). In conjunction with the historical imagery tool that allows me to track the changes in the stream running through my property, I have an idea of the behaviour that may occur in the future – thus, I have set up some “erosional sectors” with the polygon tool whereby I can expect the stream to wash away the bank in the coming years. Furthermore, one other utility I found for this was creating various ‘hazard’ sectors on my property. For example, you can use this to investigate the perimeter and/or area of a paddock, and then accurately divide this up for rotational grazing. The polygon tool is next, which allows you to encircle an entire area and investigate its properties. The elevation profile gives you a cross sectional chart to pinpoint exactly where in your land the undulations occur, and the flatter parts. The first (and most simple) direct measurement tool I will showcase is the line tool…the line tool allows me to measure any point from A to B (as the crow flies), and the elevation profile for this line. For now, I will focus predominantly on the tools that come with GEP and how you can use them to more effectively design your property. In the course, I go over the simple yet powerful tools in GEP, especially when leveraged with other layers (which I’ll get into later). That being said, some may be new to this tool and having not grown up with it may find it a bit difficult to get the reins on it, which is why I created a course on it! You can check that out here. Twelve years later, and I am using Google Earth Pro (GEP – which had previously been a paid product until 2015) as a solutions-based software that allows me to effectively design a property with a birds eye view – and, it’s super easy to use. I could go back in time to see how my hometown of Calgary sprawled across the prairies, watch the course of rivers change, or observe with slight horror the rapid rate at which forestation was occurring around the world. When I was taking a look a Google Earth though, I naturally started taking a look at everything that there was to look at – and having the whole world at my fingertips, there was a lot to look at. Until I got there that is, at which point realized the family was nuts and then found myself using Google Earth to look back at my own home for any sense of comfort – I eventually got used to the family, overcame my homesickness, and look back in fondness. After all, what teenager wouldn’t want to see where on Middle Earth they would be? Lucky for me, my host family was located about a 30 minute drive from where scenes of The Shire were filmed, so I was happy as a clam. It was then that I was introduced to Google Earth, as I naturally wanted to see what I was in for and this tool allowed me to see what the lay of the land was. I didn’t have much of a choice on where I’d end up staying, but was given an address for the location of the family that was to be hosting me. During my second semester of grade 11, I had the opportunity to travel to New Zealand and finish off that semester of school there.
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