Today, Google launched the Google Earth Engine in Labs. (Labs is where Google releases experimental features). According to Google the purpose of the Earth Engine is to provide an online environment monitoring platform in the form of a dynamic digital model of the planet. In practice this means that the Google Earth Engine provides access to satellite data that can be used for creating visual displays of information related to environmental science. Learn more about the Earth Engine in the video below.

Applications for Education
In my initial testing I didn’t find Earth Engine to be the most intuitive map or data mash-up tool I’ve tried. That said, its potential for being a useful tool for high school and college environmental science students is high.