Slashdot Mirror
Shocking Maps Show How Humans Have Reshaped Earth Since 1992 (vice.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: It's no secret that humans -- noisy, messy creatures that we are -- are vastly altering Earth's environments. But it's one thing to know this in the abstract, and another to see global changes laid out in detail, as they are in comprehensive new maps published this month in the International Journal of Applied Earth Observation and Geoinformation. Developed by geoscientist Tomasz Stepinski and his team at the University of Cincinnati's Space Informatics Lab (SPI), the intricate visualizations reveal that 22 percent of Earth's total landmass was altered between 1992 and 2015, mostly by humans. The most common change was forest loss due to agricultural development, and the second most common was the reverse -- farms to forests. The swift urbanization of grasslands, forests, and farms was also reflected in the maps.
Stepinski and his colleagues used satellite data collected by the European Space Agency's Climate Change Initiative, which included geospatial maps of land cover designed to monitor climate change. The team broke these maps into 81-kilometer-squared tracts and created a legend of color-coded tiles based on nine broad types of transitions that occurred between 1992 and 2015 (agriculture gains in yellow, forest losses in maroon, etc). The tiles are shaded to reflect the degree of change, with the lightest shade corresponding to regions altered by less than 10 percent, and dark patches representing regions that shifted by 30 percent or more. On a broad scale, the maps emphasize the massive influence of human activity on the planet. But the project has also revealed granular details about specific locations.
Stepinski and his colleagues used satellite data collected by the European Space Agency's Climate Change Initiative, which included geospatial maps of land cover designed to monitor climate change. The team broke these maps into 81-kilometer-squared tracts and created a legend of color-coded tiles based on nine broad types of transitions that occurred between 1992 and 2015 (agriculture gains in yellow, forest losses in maroon, etc). The tiles are shaded to reflect the degree of change, with the lightest shade corresponding to regions altered by less than 10 percent, and dark patches representing regions that shifted by 30 percent or more. On a broad scale, the maps emphasize the massive influence of human activity on the planet. But the project has also revealed granular details about specific locations.
It is a waste if people can use it. You want to live without commercial buildings and asphalt, go right ahead. Given the average life expectancy, there will still be enough undeveloped areas of the U.S. that you can stay in until you die. Don’t give me this crap about “oh look at these shocking maps” or “oh no, this beautiful bunch of trees was removed so that a hundred families have somewhere to live” because people who have less than you don’t want to live in a bloody forest. Frankly, I find this “one rule for thee, another for me” attitude downright disgusting.
No, fuck YOU, Sir. You are the kind of spineless shit who wants all that the modern society has to offer but blame it for doing so. Don’t want to participate in roads and supermarkets everywhere? Put your money where you mouth is and go die in the woods where there are none. The said supermarkets and roads will have one consumer less to incentivize further expansion.
We had lots of people like you once. Your backwards looking kept our culture from developing. You were against Copernicus, Galileo, and Darwin. We must grow to develop. Pastoralism (that's what the philosophy you're advocating is called) is only appropriate for undeveloped cultures that wallow in homophobia, racism, and love of their own kind. Get out of the 17th century and join the 21st.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
Socialists have been destroyed... By republicans, mostly through dirty tricks, murder, drugs, pollution and degeneracy.
The Republicans cannot create, they can only destroy, as pointed out by Tolkein and others.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)