BY BENJAMIN N. SAINSBURY AND ROBERT HICKEY
Happy Trails T
Trekking from Data to Geo-Enabled Web Site
he use and availability of GIS has greatly expanded during the last decade. With the
rise of Web-mapping application programming inter- faces (APIs) from companies such as MapQuest, Yahoo!, Microsoft and Esri, millions of users now have mapping and analysis capabilities without purchasing commercial products. Web-mapping applications also increased the variety
of spatial datasets now available to the general public. However, there are questions of reliability, usability, availability and interoperability. The Trails Co-op (www. redtrails.com) attempts to tame such variety of trails information on the Web.
26 GEO W ORLD / SEPTEMBE R 2O11
Trails Co-op and Why? The Trails Co-op Web-mapping application allows users to visualize, search, submit and download rec- reational data via easy-to-use buttons and features (see Figure 1). Users can search, view, download, upload, draw and edit information about recreational trails, all on the 3-D environment of Google Earth run- ning within a browser. The Trails Co-op has more than 35,000 trails from
across the United States, and it claims to be the first Web-mapping application to aggregate trails datasets obtained from federal (see Figure 2), state, local and individual data sources.
Web Mapping