kikita & Maps

Besides the lava-spewing volcanoes we often see in the news and the underwater volcanoes introduced in the previous article, there are also dormant volcanoes hidden beneath the surface. Their heat erupts as geysers and hot springs.

06 Yellowstone

Let’s shift our focus to Yellowstone National Park in the United States. This is a dormant volcano where magma still flows underground. The heated groundwater boils, creating geysers. In some areas, water and sediments mix to form boiling mud.

This heat provides food for animals. The film features a battle between coyotes and otters, and you might come to admire the “cool-under-fire” otter after watching it.

In ArcGIS Earth, search for Yellowstone in the top-right corner to locate the park in the heart of North America.

ArcGIS Online and Living Atlas offer a wealth of global open geographic data. These resources can be easily accessed in ArcGIS Earth. Click “Add Data” from the toolbar and search for Yellowstone to find many related datasets.

For instance, you can add a Web Map dataset like “Yellowstone Interactive Map” to explore the park’s boundaries and details.

In ArcGIS Earth’s Table of Contents, each layer has a right-click menu with many configurable options, such as symbols, labels, and attribute information. Users can experiment with their map styles as needed.

Volcanoes are not only sculptors of the Earth but also windows for scientists to study geological activity.

Previous Article: In our previous exploration, we embarked on a journey using ArcGIS Earth to uncover the mysteries of volcanoes and familiarize ourselves with its basic operations. Today, let’s dive further into the three-dimensional world of volcanoes and explore the possibilities of combining terrain and data.

Leaving behind the perilous Fernandina Volcano, we continue onward. Following the lens, we slide northward in the eastern Pacific…

04 Wolf Island

Wolf Island is a dormant volcano over a million years old, located more than 1,200 kilometers from the nearest continent. It is one of the most remote volcanic islands in the Galápagos Archipelago.

Survival on this isolated volcanic island seems to have activated “hell mode.” To adapt to the harsh environment, animals here have evolved rapidly. On this barren island, small finches have evolved into a blood-sucking species—the vampire finch.

If you’re interested in tectonic plates, in ArcGIS Earth, you can click Add Data and search keywords like “Earth” or “Tectonic.” Among the publicly available resources on ArcGIS Online is Earth’s Tectonic Plates. After adding this data to ArcGIS Earth, we can clearly see that the Galápagos Archipelago sits at the intersection of three major tectonic plates: the Nazca, Cocos, and Pacific Plates.

The BBC’s documentaries are almost all masterpieces, and of course, I am an avid fan—especially of the Planet series. The wallpaper-grade visuals and the narration full of memorable quotes bring brilliance to days spent indoors.

In early 2021, the BBC released A Perfect Planet, a documentary that took four years to produce. Filmed across six continents and 31 countries, it spans four episodes, illustrating the wondrous forces shaping Earth—volcanoes, the sun, weather, and the ocean—while maintaining its delicate balance. The final segment examines humanity’s impact on our planet.

My child was particularly curious, repeatedly asking me where these filming locations were. That’s also the question I wanted to explore, so I decided to dive deeper. This article focuses on the filming locations featured in the first episode, Volcanoes, exploring the terrains and landscapes together. If you have a projector and a blank wall at home, the immersive effect is even better.

Across Earth’s surface, there are more than 1,500 active volcanoes. Without volcanoes, Earth wouldn’t have oceans, land, an atmosphere, or even life itself.

01 Kilauea Volcano

Accompanied by the spectacular eruption footage and Sir David Attenborough’s familiar voice, the journey begins with Kilauea Volcano in Hawaii, one of the most active and massive volcanoes in the world.

Finding this volcano’s location is simple, but if you want to view it from a “God’s eye view” or a “drone perspective,” ArcGIS Earth is an excellent choice. It’s free to download, beginner-friendly, and even suitable for kids.

ArcGIS Earth provides high-resolution global basemaps and includes global elevation services to support realistic terrain visualization. Its GeoSearch feature allows you to type in a location name and fly directly to the recommended spot. By adjusting terrain exaggeration, you can enhance the contrast of terrain undulations to closely study the shape of the crater.

When my child asked where the volcano is, exploring the 3D map made it easier to explain terms like Hawaii, Pacific Ocean, archipelago, southeastern region, and crater. Switching between basemaps offers diverse views of the terrain.