Copyright © 2015, American-Eurasian Network for Scientific Information publisher American-Eurasian Journal of Sustainable Agriculture ISSN: 1995-0748 JOURNAL home page: http://www.aensiweb.com/AEJSA 2015 March 9 (3): pages 10-15. Published Online 10 March 2015. Research Article Corresponding Author: Ahmed Hassanein, Systems and Information Department, Engineering Division, National Research Centre, Dokki, Giza, Egypt. E-mail: ahmed22@aucegypt.edu Direct Extraction of Elevation Values From Google Earth Images Ahmed M.D.E. Hassanein, Systems and Information Department, Engineering Division, National Research Centre, Dokki, Giza, Egypt. Received: 26 December 2014; Revised: 12 January 2015; Accepted: 12 February 2015 © 2015 AENSI PUBLISHER All rights reserved ABSTRACT Google Earth images are a free source of accurate positional data for geographic places on earth. All three dimensional data for any position can be seen on screen from Google Earth but only partially downloaded. Information about elevation is missing. A technique that is based on Matlab™ functions is described in this paper that can be used to extract elevation data from the images. It depen ds on two main stages. The first is concerned with transforming an image of a plot to a graph. The second is concerned with fitting and interpolating the elevation data in the graph. Results of each stage are discussed and evaluated. Key words: Google Earth Images, Positional Accuracy, Elevation Profile, XML file. INTRODUCTION Google Earth is a free web-based application which integrates digital images and digital information. [1] It provides an open source, easy to access and cost free image data that is needed by the map interest community. People can extract information from the satellite images obtained by digitizing areas understudy and transfer them for use elsewhere. [2] The usage of the image data covers many areas among which discovering the possible use of lands, the covering of remote areas on earth and the development of rivers and lakes over time. Google Earth (GE) releases images in high spatial resolution that provide some potential for regional land use/cover mapping, especially for those regions with high heterogeneous landscapes. Images are either used to give additional data to collect the training or testing samples for land use/cover classification and validation or used as a visualization tool for land use/cover maps. [3] Another research paper discusses the study of the different agro-ecological zones in the Upper Ganga river stretch. Sites which represent the zones which are used in the river study are shown with GE images of their environments. [4] In another application, paper [5] concludes that interpretation of GE images for fast evaluation of the extent of channels on large areas is a useful approach particularly where old, well developed channel systems are prevalent in agricultural/cleared land. The study showed that large shade cover in plantations and native forest precluded observation of channels beneath. Channels under forest shade could only be recognized on areas felled or burnt before the image was taken. Despite the limits, the use of GE images allowed the evaluation of channel extent over a very large area in relatively short time and at no cost for image acquisition. [5] The application of GE images in studying the water in rivers is discussed in the next subsection. Overview of Ge Application in Rivers: