Radio 5 interview on disappearing island
Our GeoWeb expert in Geography and Environment was recently interviewed on Radio 5 Live, sharing his knowledge in this area to help explain a mystery island.
Richard Treves was interviewed on national Radio 5 Live drive time recently discussing a cartographic problem: the non-existence of Sandy island in a remote part of the Coral Sea off the NE coast of Australia.
"Scientists had sailed to the area where an island was marked in Google and Bing maps between New Caledonia and Australia and discovered it wasn't there. I explained that map makers such as Bing and Google take data from a number of sources and sometimes there are errors that don't get spotted. Google offers users the ability to tag issues such as this so they can be corrected."
Richard researches the usability of maps looking at ways that tools such as Google Earth can be used to help students learn about geographic concepts.
