Extreme Ice Survey Website & Project Mapping in Google Earth
A Time Lapse View of Climate Change

Extreme Ice Survey (www.extremeicesurvey.org) is a non environmental photography project by award-winning nature photographer James Balog that documents the impact of global climate change on glaciers around the world. The Extreme Ice Survey team has set up 26 time-lapse cameras in Greenland, Iceland, Alaska, the Rocky Mountains, British Columbia, the Alps, Bolivia, and on Mount Kilimanjaro to collect compelling evidence of retreating glaciers. The acclaimed project is the subject of a NOVA documentary and the book Extreme Ice Now.

Challenge:

Extreme Ice Survey (EIS) already had a Flash-based website that showcased many of James Balog’s stunning photos and videos shot on trips to visit glaciers around the world. But EIS wanted to develop a more sophisticated website that integrated GIS mapping into the fabric of the site, overlaying EIS footage and photos into satellite maps. Additionally, the team needed a real-time blogging function, so that they could add commentary and thoughts to the site as the EIS team travels the globe documenting the glaciers’ retreat.

Solution:

The EIS team hired Fusestudios to build the site and develop the Google Earth files showcasing the EIS Videos around the world. We selected concrete5 (www.concrete5.org), an open source content management system as the foundation for the site for its intuitive interface and ease of use, and Wordpress to power the team members blogs. EIS now has a fully functional, sophisticated website that its non-technical team can update automatically and continuously with live photo feeds from the 26 cameras.

Successes

The new EIS website is so easy to use that the EIS team is able to manage most updates to the site themselves. Since EIS is a creative and environmental project, they didn’t want to worry about the technical aspects of running a website, instead the team wanted to focus on continuing to build a highly engaging website that would engage visitors without having to continue to rely on consultants for ever update. EIS’ goal is to educate as many people as possible about the very real impact that global warming is having on the planet. With Fusestudios help, they now have a website aligned with that mission.

The Google Earth Layer was showcased by Google, and the project was highlighted by a number of major media outlets, including the Denver Post, NPR's Fresh Air with Terry Gross, and Al Gores website.

From the developer

“The EIS website provides a very powerful toolset right out of the driveway. The EIS site is media rich, state-of-the-art and highly sophisticated, merging real-time images, video, and Google Earth satellite maps into a seamless, easy-to-navigate site that invites interaction via live blogs. A site like EIS's would have cost significantly more and taken much longer to develop without using a powerful content management system like concrete5. Using concrete5 we integrated the design and content very quickly, and had our site up and running quickly and on budget. ” – Bryce Tugwell