UNEP: GEMStat Flying with Google Earth

 The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), through its GEMS/Water Programme, is launching a new capability to its scientific resource, GEMStat, by making it geospatially referenced to Google Earth. GEMStat provides environmental water quality data and information that is scientifically credible, accessible and interoperable. GEMStat’s website at http://www.gemstat.org shares surface and ground water quality data sets collected from the GEMS/Water Global Network, including over 2,743 stations, two million records, and over 100 parameters. These data serve to strengthen the scientific basis for global and regional water assessments, indicators and early warning. This news item follows UNEP’s announcement on 13 September 2006 of its partnership with Google Earth, designed to offer a new way of visualizing our changing global environment using sattellite images. On the other hand, UNEP convened the third meeting of its Technical Advisory Group for its GEMS/Water Programme from 25 to 26 September 2006. The meeting was hosted by UNEP-World Conservation Monitoring Centre (WCMC) in Cambridge, and brought together technical and scientific experts from United Nations bodies and other partners committed to environmental water quality and sustainability. The fourth advisory meeting is scheduled for early 2008.