A session on the International Polar Year (IPY) will be held at the 5th
International Symposium on Digital Earth on 5-9 June 2007, in San
Francisco, California.

Digital Earth is the label given to a visionary concept, made popular in
1998 by U.S. Vice President Al Gore, for describing an online, virtual
representation of the Earth that is spatially referenced and
interconnected with the world's digital knowledge archives. The vision
embraces a philosophy that any citizen of the planet, linked through the
Internet, should be able to freely access a virtual world of information
and knowledge resources.

Because the poles are so poorly represented on typical paper maps, digital technologies offer an excellent means to educate the public about their true location, scale, and importance.  Given the fortuitous timing between this IPY, this ISDE, the recent advances in Digital Earth technologies, and the significant changes in climate that have recently begun in the Arctic and Antarctic, we expect this session will serve as a model precursor to how most fields of earth sciences will organize, analyze, and distribute geospatial data in the future.

Presentations and/or papers are invited for the IPY session on themes
such as science, public policy, data management, and education involving
any use of technology related to the Digital Earth vision, including
websites, GIS, streaming video, or virtual globes like Google Earth.