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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.
The sick thing you're missing is that they see it as improvement - repair instead of damage.
Driving down the road with someone of that mindset I've heard comments like "why don't they mow that mess" when passing grassland and "when are they going to get those dead trees out" when passing forests containing damaged trees here and there. At the same time, every new forest area developed to commercial buildings and asphalt gets accolades for improvement.
Basically, this person cannot comprehend why we can't develop every square inch of the Earth. Anything left natural is unkempt and waste in their eyes.
It's not shocking, but the maps are really cool. Something that surprised me about the maps is how much forest area has increased over that time. I didn't expect that.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
This puts us ahead of the Elephants, who turned mere millions of square km of jungle into grassland.
But still well behind the cyanobacteria in changing the planet and causing mass extinction.
These shocking maps... Number 7 will blow your mind!
#DeleteChrome
I'm not denying global warming. I want a total audit of its causes. Stop thinking in boxes.
E Proelio Veritas.
Those are demonstrations of what, exactly?
Can you cite a specific left-wing action involved in causing those cities to implode?
I doubt it. You're not interested in causes and effects, nor in the difference between social liberalism, fiscal liberalism or political liberalism. You care about a label you can call "bad" because that magically makes the tribe you belong to "good".
God, I hate tribal politics. Bloody stone age freaks screaming at each other.
Until one if you bloody well reaches civilization, don't waste my time.
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)
Depends on the agriculture.
There's no evidence of any significant environmental impact from agriculture specifically until about 3,500 BC.
So it's not agriculture, it's scale and density. Small scale, low density agriculture won't alter the soil, the albedo or the local climate.
The question is, what can you scale these up to?
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)