It probably comes as no surprise that the Google Earth team gets very excited about Earth Day. Today we're celebrating Earth Day by featuring a special collection of KMLs in our Gallery to inspire awareness and appreciation for the Earth's environment -- it's a present to the Earth and also to you!

Our blue planet is an exceptionally complex ecosystem with a sophisticated tapestry of millions of sub-ecosystems and living creatures. Sometimes it becomes easy to overlook the impact of our action to this intricate yet fragile ecosystem. Why not mark Earth Day by using Google Earth to explore featured KMLs in our Gallery, which provide rich geospatial presentation illustrating interesting changes in our environment? For example, discover changes in glaciers over the yearsrising sea levels and climatic change and rising temperature from the featured KMLs in our Gallery. 

With annotated data on top of Google Earth, these KMLs provides insight into the way humans are interacting with ecosystems around the world. Do you know that how much overfishing has occurred in the past? How does the equivalent of 1.5 million elephants of fisheries catches in the water of Alaska sound to you? You can learn more from this KML. Our collection also features information about the worst oil spill disaster in the history and air pollution in UK -- some good food for thought as you reflect on Earth Day.

However, progress has been made and several organizations have always stayed at forefront to help conserve the environement: NDBCNOAAWWFEarthWatch, and a lot of other organizations are the real unsung heroes behind the global effort to reverse the vicious trends. Groups like these inspire us to do better to conserve the the planet everyday. Google is committed to environmental initiatives of our own, and we salute all of those who are doing inspiring things to help make the Earth a better place not just once a year, but every day.