Google Earth Web Service as a Support for GIS Mapping in Geospatial Research at Universities

The geospatial work has been performed using combination of the Google Earth imagery, Landsat TM images and Erdas Imagine GIS software. The advantage of utilizing Google Earth scenes with Landsat TM satellite imagery, along with GIS techniques and methods, for inventorying land cover types has been demonstrated for landscape studies. Combination of land cover type characteristics and landscape changes enabled to analyse landscape dynamics, as well as applicability of Google Earth service for thematic mapping. The used data included Landsat TM and ETM+ multi-band imagery covering area in Izmir, western Turkey. The image processing was per- formed using supervised classification in Erdas Imagine software. The Google Earth web service technologies were applied to test the accuracy of mapping via the available module of Erdas Imagine Linking with Google Earth.