Google Earth: Suspected Earth Impact Sites (KML)

NOTICE: The KML has been updated.

A while ago I found the Impact Field Studies Group:

… The overall intent in forming IFSG is to bring together widely-separated researchers doing work at a variety of impact crater locations to share the observations and field experience for the common good of the impact community.

What’s most interesting about this group is that they’re maintaining a massive data base of 543 suspected Earth impact craters. Note the bold suspected! Now, you may know I’ve already converted the confirmed ‘Earth Impact Database’. You can imagine the former one just has Google Earth written all over it. So without further ado I present you:

What’s in this database?
Well three times the dents you got from the confirmed one. Mostly small craters, but a few extremely large ones like the 800 km (~500 mile) Bangui in Africa (covering almost the entire Central African Republic). I had to skip a few because of lacking coordinates. Not all data is correct, as you may notice a few scattered in mid-ocean, just click the icon to find out where it should belong. It’s all a matter of garbage-in-garbage-out (apart from the few conversion mistakes made by me). I hope you’ll enjoy this one.

Note: no network link this time as I didn’t want to polute the confirmed database and fear my little server won’t handle the load churning up 499 craters.

IMPORTANT NOTE FOR MAC USERS: I found out yesterday that this KML collection borks Google Earth for Mac. Please do not save it in your ‘My Places’ folder as it will work fine at first but after a restart you may loose all your placemarks! Because of some weird character bug, where otherwise fine KML data gets corrupted, it brings down your entire collection. Don’t ask me why or how. You can leave it in your ‘Temporary Places’ folder, just remember NOT to save it.
If you did get the corrupted ‘My Places’ you can get your placemarks back by visiting your ‘~/Library/Application Settings/Google Earth/’ folder (or something like that). Your placemarks file resides there and you may salvage what’s left of it.
Sorry, GE for Mac’s really Beta I guess.
It works fine on GE for PC, though!

Update 2006-02-21: I think it’s now safe for Mac users, provided you’ve updated to the latest beta.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 31st, 2006 at 4:41 pm and is filed under Google Earth, Development, ThinkLemon, General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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9 Responses to “Google Earth: Suspected Earth Impact Sites (KML)”

1. David Rajmon Says:
   February 10th, 2006 at 3:40 am

   Dear Sir,
   I am the author of the SEIS database. I am very happy to see people picking it up. Your implementation for Google Earth is excellent. Not only for general look up of the structures but also for helping to improve the accuracy/precission of the coordinates.
   The structures in oceans you mentioned are not a mistake! They indeed occur there. There is, however, a lot of other inaccurate, missing and non verified information in the database. I am gradually working through it and the database is being updated periodically. If anyone notices someting suspicious please, please let me know.
   Sir, would you please contact me at drajmon@yahoo.com? I would like to discuss a possible collaboration on future updates.
   Sincerely,
   David Rajmon

2. Caspar Says:
   February 11th, 2006 at 2:27 am

   Hello David,

   Thank you(!) for collecting the data in the first place. When I did the ‘confirmed’ collection I also found that some impact craters where not spot-on. The general rule being, the smaller the crater, the more off place it is due to insufficient ‘resolution’ in the data. But GE is a tremendous help in checking ‘the facts’. As you have found yourself. (Assuming that the coordinates in GE are correct.)

   As for the ‘mid-ocean’ foul-ups, please see the southern part of the Indian Ocean with this set. You’ll find a few craters that should be in South-America (Argentina specifically). I meant those, not the ones like the Silverpit in the North-Sea.

   On the collaboration part, I’m interested. But please note that converting the way I did with this database is cumbersome. First I took your Excel-sheet, manually fixed/altered/added the data, converted it with a script to a CSV file, imported it to MySQL (several retries), adapted the ‘confirmed’ KML-script, output to browser, save as XML, import to Google Earth, constructed a single KML from several continents. Hardly an efficient way to handle things. So I do have some thoughts how to go about this. To be continued…

3. LPOD lunar photo of the day » WHERE HAVE ALL THE CRATERS GONE? Says:
   June 21st, 2006 at 5:27 am

   […] Related Links: Rükl chart: wrong planet Impact Field Studies Group Earth Impact Database Impact craters and Google Earth […]

4. somedude Says:
   September 10th, 2006 at 3:14 am

   Where is your entry for the Wetumpka Alabama marine impact crater?

   http://www.geosociety.org/fieldForums/07wetumpka.htm

5. Caspar Says:
   September 10th, 2006 at 2:05 pm

   Wetumpka Alabama is one of the 172 confirmed impact craters. Therefore it isn’t in the SEIS-database. Fortunately you can find the crater if you download the North American collection found on the Google Earth Impacts page. Don’t forget to download the other impacts though.

6. Gregory Herman Says:
   September 5th, 2007 at 7:18 pm

   Caspar,

   Thank you for putting this together. Coming from a completely biased point a view, I would very much like to see the Cuvette Central (Africa) proposed impact added to this work. It’s in the SEIS database but does not appear on your version. This feature may prove be one of the most significant tectonic features on Earth. Please see www.impacttectonics.org/gondwana.html for more details. Thank you.

   Sincerely

   Gregory Herman

7. Caspar Says:
   September 11th, 2007 at 12:33 am

   Hello Gregory,

   I am aware that the Google Earth version of the SEIS database is a bit behind. Only a year or so. That may seem a lot, but in geological terms…

   Anyway, converting from SEIS to KML takes a bit of an effort. Thanks for the reminder though. I’ll look into it when I have/make some spare time.

8. Paul Bissonnette Says:
   November 15th, 2007 at 12:06 am

   Sir,

   I’ve located a structure which I believe to be an impact crater, yet I do not find it listed in any of the databases I’ve been able to reference. I’d like to report it’s coordinates to any interested party for possible investigation/verification. Please forward any contact information. Thanks.

   PRB

9. Roy Browning Says:
   July 4th, 2008 at 7:48 am

   I have noticed that many shoreline features combined with ocean floor topography give rather clear indication of craters that are not mentioned in any charts. The craters I am seeing are very large and combine features such as the arctic ocean floor topography combined with the shoreline of North America, Northern Siberia, and Europa giving a crater that appears to define the top of the planet, similar to the recently acclaimed Mars very large impact crater.

   Another is defined using Providence Island to the North tip of Madagascar as the center with the Coast of Africa on the west and the islands of Port Louis and Saint Denis to the South East rim.

   More would be the Gulf of Mexico formed by an angled impact coming in low over North America, The Caribbean sea area off the coast of Costa Rica.
   The Caribbean Sea area defined by Cuba on one side and the Yucatan on the other, Caymans forming the center.
   Hudson’s Bay in Canada with at least 3 craters combined.
   The Bearing Sea with the Aleutians forming the Southern rim.
   The Yellow Sea formed by at least 5 craters.

   The Bismarck Sea with New Britain and Manus Island forming most of the rim.
   The area directly South of Port Moresby has what appears to be 2 combined craters.

   Many others I am sure but those are obvious.

   Regards, Roy

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