Welcome To Festive Earth Society

UNEP’s Global Environmental Monitoring System (GEMS) Water Programme maps GEMStat, the only online global database on water quality, with Google Earth

Burlington/Nairobi, November 13, 2006. Today, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), through its GEMS/Water Programme, is launching a new capability to its scientific resource, GEMStat, by making it geospatially referenced to Google Earth. GEMStat provides environmental water quality data and information that is scientifically credible, accessible and interoperable. GEMStat’s website at http://www.gemstat.org shares surface and ground water quality data sets collected from the GEMS/Water Global Network, including over 2,743 stations, two million records, and over 100 parameters. These data serve to strengthen the scientific basis for global and regional water assessments, indicators and early warning.

This news item follows UNEP’s announcement on 13 September 2006 of its partnership with Google Earth, designed to offer a new way of visualizing our changing global environment using sattellite images.

GEMStat provides access to data from 2,743 stations around the world that cover all types of inland aquatic environments which are important for global water assessment. These include surface waters such as lakes, reservoirs, streams, rivers, estuaries, and wetlands; and groundwater aquifers. All data are subject to standard data integrity review processes. With Google Earth all 2,743 stations can be geospatially located with 3-dimentional satellite pictures. This means that the physical features and characteristics of each GEMStat monitoring station are visible, such as land use, deforestation, proximity to a factory or a city.

Dr. Richard Robarts, GEMS/Water’s director, highlights that flying with Google Earth is a boon to researchers everywhere. “No matter where you are located, as long as you have access to the Internet, water quality practitioners, researchers and scientists can see GEMStat stations in their physical surroundings. I am confident that this service will help generate better water quality assessments, and better decisions being made to manage all water resources. The whole international community benefits.”

Outlook
Google has brought geographic information to over 100 million people. Riding on the wave of that success are the information providers, like GEMS/Water, who can now open their products to more intensive scrutiny, more imaginative exploitation and more innovative exploration of possible uses. Simply allowing open access to everyone to see where water quality is being assessed and where it is not, may lead to more governments contributing data to the global network, or better-informed but non-specialist citizenry being prompted to challenge their authorities about the long-term effects on their water quality.

How to get Google Earth

Follow these steps to display GEMS/Water stations in Google Earth:

1. Visit http://earth.google.com/ , download and install Google Earth freeware.
2. Start up Google Earth.
3. Go to the GEMStat web site at http://www.gemstat.org.
4. Click on the link “Search for Data” from the menu down the left side.
5. Select a Region from the drop-down menu (optional).
6. Set the “Select by” option to Country.
7. Select a Country from the drop down menu.
8. Click on one of the links just below the map to show stations in selected country, or all stations (world).
9. Depending on your browser settings, clicking on a link will automatically display the stations in Google Earth, or prompt you to Open with Google Earth or Save to Disk. The saved file can then be opened in Google Earth using File → Open from the main menu.

More information can be found at http://www.gemstat.org/kmz.aspx.

What does GEMS/Water do?
Since its establishment in 1978, UNEP’s Global Environmental Monitoring System (GEMS) Water Programme has become the primary source for global environmental water quality data. It is a multi-faceted water science centre oriented towards knowledge development on inland quality issues throughout the world.  Major activities include monitoring, assessment and capacity building. The twin goals of the programme are to improve water quality monitoring and assessment capabilities in participating countries, and to determine the status and trends of regional and global water quality.  These goals are implemented through the GEMS/Water data bank, including water quality data and information from more than 100 countries, with over two million entries for lakes, reservoirs, rivers and groundwater systems. By compiling a global database, GEMS/Water adds value to country-level data by contributing to global and regional water quality assessments. The programme also carries out evaluations on a range of water quality issues and methodologies. GEMS/Water data have been used by other organizations, including the UN system and universities around the world.

For more information about water quality, please contact: Dr. Richard D. Robarts, Director, UN GEMS/Water Programme, 867 Lakeshore Road, Burlington, Ontario, L7R 4A6, Canada, tel: + 1 306 975 6047 fax: + 1 306 975 5143 e-mail: This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it or visit www.gemswater.org