UKC

Hi all. Any ideas what the orange shaded areas on google maps represent? Seems to be a feature since the updates last year. They overlay forested areas, grass slopes, coastal areas and other geographies. I originally thought it was popular areas or areas of interest, as they cover The Ben, Snowden etc, but they also appear over areas that don’t get a lot of attention. The closest to me are the southeastern flanks of Stuc a'Chroin (but not its sister, Ben Vorlich, which gets a lot more attention), and the hillside just north of Auchinner, at the end of the road at Glen Artney - an area of hillside which can’t be getting too many visitors I imagine. 
Google search doesn't seem to provide an answer

In reply to ogreville:

I didn't know either, and it's an odd pattern - corresponding quite often with higher land, but not consistently.

I think I found what it is, though - they're trying to better reflect the terrain and features by representing it with colours, based on information from the satellite imagery:

https://blog.google/products/maps/more-detailed-colorful-map/

The Daily Mail has a longer article on it, too:

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-8646633/Google-Maps-updates...

In reply to skog:

Thanks for these links. This seems to explain a lot of the new colour variations on google maps, but I'm still a bit puzzles as to the way the orange shade is used.

If it is to represent  elevations, then I can understand why it would be present around Ben Nevis, but why is there a small patch west of Ullapool  on an indistinct hillside at 300m (57.90936799638336, -4.846846115598333 - need to zoom out a bit).

Also, Schiehallion is over 1000 metres, prominent and well visited, so why is it not highlighted in Orange. All very odd. 

In reply to ogreville: If you toggle between satellite and 'maps' doesn't it represent non/less vegetated?

In reply to wbo2:

looking at the region around my home (southern French Alps) the orange seems to be the area above the tree line (so linked to altitude & land use)

In reply to ogreville:

Not just orange. There's a sort of beige, lighter and darker green too. The bright hugely well paid nerdy sparks at Google have had a good idea of some sort. They haven't done the obvious thing and provided a map key to explain the new camo effect because hey, that wouldn't be cool. Or something. Who knows. Idiots.

In reply to ogreville:

I don’t know the answer, but this is a related and useful fact : Some of the U.K. has been mapped on google earth in exceptionally high resolution, with amazing 3D details at the surface.

Notably, snowdonia has been done. You can see individual crack lines on idwal slabs, rucksacks at the base of cenotaph corner and great detail in the slate quarries. 

The imagery in the lakes is rubbish in comparison.

Some towns & cities done too.

If you have a VR headset, google earth VR is incredible in these areas.
 

link to available areas :

https://earth.google.com/web/data=CiQSIhIgZDY1OGRjYWIzNjlhMTFlOGFjNmU2OWJjN...

In reply to sbc23:

I don't even have a fast enough internet connection to handle it!

In reply to ogreville: Oddly, I tried googling it....

https://design.google/library/exploring-color-google-maps/

The idiots at google explain what they did so us idiots out here can better understand.  But going somewhere in Scotland and toggling to/from satellite is quite revealing

In reply to wbo2:

Thanks for the link.  Can't say I use Google maps much. Always thought of it as very poor as a map.  There was cirtainly a need for change.  The radar scand areas are amazing though.  You can clearly see what cars on sat on our drive.

In reply to BuzyG:Really? I think it's astonishing - I can't think of a tool I use more outside work.  There's an amazing amount of info in there., especially for planning trips

Although I really out to use Google Earth a bit more... 

In reply to wbo2:

Amidst all the guff they still don't explain how they derive the unattractive splats in mountainous areas. Presumably they are based on contours? I can't be bothered to google it.
In more urban and flat areas the colouring is still so pale and undifferentiated that it can make the maps hard to read. 

Google maps are incredible and have their place but visually they aren't up to much.

In reply to digby:

The colour palette is also a bit bizarre, with a class for 'vegetation' (green) but also for tundra & shrub - both of which are vegetated. Areas around me which are 'orange' are mostly alpine grasslands, large areas of scree at low altitude are coloured green, although they have no vegetation. All sound a bit like design rather than accuracy

In reply to digby:

Well, perhaps you should have 'googled it'...

"With a new color-mapping algorithmic technique, we’re able to take this imagery and translate it into an even more comprehensive, vibrant map..."

and "so you can easily distinguish tan, arid beaches and deserts from blue lakes, rivers, oceans..."

Yeh, it's crap. Their example of how it helps is to show the Iceland lava fields as largely green. OK, There's lots of lichen there, but I don't think that how people would interpret 'green'.

But they are now more 'engaging' and 'accessible'. There will be a thousand people going "Oooh wow, nice" for each one saying "but that's inaccurate!" Welcome to Modern Mapping - it how it makes you feel, not what it tells you that matters.

In reply to digby: Well the examples I'm looking at have darker green farm and woodland, and orangey colour where there's a lot more exposed rock at the surface.  So I might not agree with it 100% but I think it's doing a decent job.  I guess it's being done by image analysis and a bit of classification and smoothing to get the outlines.  It's not countouring as it's not correlated with height (obvious if you look at it)

If you can't be bothered to google things you don't know then don't complain about being uninformed.  

I think there's a terrific amount of information there..  at least for my purposes - great for finding climbing, new boulders, how to get them.  The combination with streetview is very good.  ALso good if you like geology, a geology map is nice, but so is being able to find outcrops.

 What do you think is better?

In reply to wbo2:

Yes thank you for that comment.

Read Marek's post for a better analysis than I can give.

There's no point googling which colour around Ben Nevis relates to tundra or whatever. The splats are ugly and uninformative. Seems unlikely that the designers have ever looked at a 'proper' map like Ordnance Survey.

Maps conventionally have keys to explain their graphic elements.

I don't use Gmaps for anything other than what they are supremely good at.

In reply to ogreville:

Stop trying to make sense of it, boomer.

It's an app, for the use of young, educated people, in urban areas

In reply to Marek:

I suspect they use a vegetation index, which are often based on near infra-red spectra. The short version is that something which reflects a lot in this waveband, whilst absorbing a lot in the red waveband, will appear to be vegetation on the index, even if it's not. 

In reply to ianstevens:

If thats true its not working very well. Around here the division from grey to green follows roads & rivers and I know the land cover is the same on both sides. Not far from here is a large woodland (several square kilometres) which is shown as grey not green. The orange seems based on altitude