Assess site suitability

Use Google Earth's elevation contour tool to visualize terrain directly in your map project and assess site suitability based on the aspect, curvature and slope of an area of interest.

Generate site-level elevation contours

Open an existing project or create a new one in Google Earth.
In the toolbar, click the area_chart

Create contours button, which opens the Contours dialog.
Draw a polygon to designate your site. Click the map to set points that outline your site.
1. To remove a point, click Undo on the right.
To complete your site, select your first point to close the polygon.

Note: Once you close the polygon, you can't undo points. If you need to redraw the polygon, close the Contours dialog and re-click the Create contours button.
Enter your intended contour interval for the site. Select an integer value between 1 and 20 meters, inclusive.
1. Selecting 1 meter will provide the highest fidelity results (1 contour line for each meter change in elevation).
2. Selecting 20 meters will provide the coarsest contour results, which is also available as a data layer in Google Earth's data catalog.
After entering or adjusting the input, click Create layer to start the generation process.

Note: Generating a contour layer may take up to 10 minutes.

View elevation contour results

When contour generation begins, your project's Map contents panel on the left starts listing the associated polygon and tracks the generation using a progress bar. The generation time depends on the site's size and hilliness.

When contour generation is complete, a data layer titled Untitled contours will be added to your project's Map contents panel. To view results of the contour generation, do the following:

Select Untitled contours from the Map contents panel to open an inspector panel on the right. Learn how to manage and style site assessment data layers.
Zoom and rotate the map around the contour data layer to explore the visualization and make your assessments.
Click a label on a contour line to view its elevation information in the inspector panel.

Important notes

You can generate contours for only one site at a time.
You need to draw your site each time you want to generate the contours.
For the best experience viewing contour data layers, disable 3D Buildings under Basemap settings.
Collaborate with the site assessment data layers by sharing the project.