Shocking Maps Show How Humans Have Reshaped Earth Since 1992 (vice.com) 88
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.
Shocking Maps (Score:2, Insightful)
The team broke these maps into 81-kilometer-squared tracts
Being paid to stare at huge tracts of land all day? Where can I sign up?!
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>> The team broke these maps into 81-kilometer-squared tracts
>_ Being paid to stare at huge tracts of land all day? Where can I sign up?!
And everybody will doubt you. They'll say it's a hoax. It's there, visible on screen and on paper, but even so they'll say it's a lie.
Do you still want it? The problem is not becoming a clown, the issue is you will be seeing everyday a catastrophe in the making and no one will even want to take any action. The frustration will be deadly.
https://xkcd.com/331/
Re:Republicans cannot admit humans damage the Eart (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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please mod this up
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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.
Be careful what you wish for. That's how we got the Unabomber.
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Holy false dichotomy, Batman!
Re: Republicans cannot admit humans damage the Ear (Score:2)
Then explsin why underdeveloped societies have longer life expectancies.
Explain why you can transport hundreds more at three times the speed by rail than by road, with no asphalt.
Explain why you can have underground homes and hospitals that have zero footprint on the surface.
But you can't. You cannot explain these facts unless you first accept that what you have is suboptimal. And you cannot accept that without first accepting you can do without individual defective features like asphalt.
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Then explsin why underdeveloped societies have longer life expectancies.
Stop right there. What 2nd or 3rd world country are you talking about that has longer life expediencies then developed societies?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Japan is an underdeveloped country?
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Your first point is demonstrably wrong and I am genuinely surprised that there are people on
You second point is a non sequitor. Both rail and road have their place, which is why we also use both. I don’t know of a single na
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RhettL never advocated pastoralism. So now you're not only pushing the false dichotomy, you're even lying about what was said.
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Not thoughtlessly approving of every man-made change does not make one a goat herder.
OTOH, I think maybe you don't know what Fascism is.
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Perhaps you got your face so far up your colon, you don't even recognize fascism when you espouse it.
Re: Republicans cannot admit humans damage the Ear (Score:2, Insightful)
You can progress without having an increased surface footprint.
If you were to upgrade US and European rail links, such that travel averaged speeds of 175-225mph, with access to every town and village, you would greatly increase mobility for more of the people.
Rail has a more neutral albedo than tarmac and can be built to superior standards.
American roads are horribly built and getting rid of the Interstates would be massively progressive.
Of course, you need cars. The X-Prize car should be the new minimum st
And... (Score:3)
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
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No, that's the view of the right.
The left doesn't dominate. That is how it is defined.
Re: Republicans cannot admit humans damage the Ear (Score:2)
By definition, liberals do not believe that. You must choose, either they're not a liberal or they do not believe what you claim.
But, then, this cult of alternative facts means you probably think you really can make words mean what you like.
ecosystems & annual agriculture (Score:1)
"The middle east today is what annual ag does." @RestorationAgD http://bit.ly/1K3otw2 [bit.ly]
Re: ecosystems & annual agriculture (Score:3)
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?
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The alarmists are the ones claiming nothing is wrong other than the scientists. The alarmists are the ones who believe that by killing opponents will change the world.
Re: ecosystems & annual agriculture (Score:1)
Shocking Headlines (Score:2)
Show how earth people have been hyping stories since they sat around the cave fire.
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*found on a cave wall*
Start a cookfire with this one weird trick!
How did Og make such a sharp knife? Hunters hate him!
Re: Shocking Headlines (Score:3)
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Why didn't you expect it? North America has a lot more forest than it did 100 years ago.
Look at the maps, notice the location of a lot of the new forests. Sure, I expect new trees in green states like California, or on the edge of farmland like the great Lakes, but the quantity and location is rather surprising.
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The stark disappearance of the Aral Sea, due to disruptions of its tributaries by irrigation projects, shows up as a visible blob on the Kazakh-Uzbek border.
Or, if you're airborne and the flight map tells you you're over it, you can look down and see the big patch of dark dirt where it used to be.
It was one of the most profoundly depressing experiences of my life.
Has anyone bothered to (Score:2)
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Then why not just google it? The IPCC reports have comprehensive and quantitative reports on all the major natural and anthropogenic forcings. For albedo, see IPCC AR5 WG1 Chapter 8:
There is robust evidence that anthropogenic land use change
has increased the land surface albedo, which leads to an RF of
–0.15 ± 0.10 Wm^–2.
This is from a total anthropogenic forcing of about 2.3 W m^-2, of which 2.83 W m^-2 is contributed by greenhouse gases.
Are They... (Score:2)
Jaw dropping?
Click-bait much?
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These shocking maps... Number 7 will blow your mind!
So we are talking 5% of the earths surface ? (Score:2)
Just to put that into a more meaningful number 75% of the surface being water and only 25% landmass
Lower than expected (Score:2)
22 percent of Earth's total landmass was altered between 1992 and 2015
Given that in 1992 the world's population was 5.5 billion and in 2015 it was 7.38 billion, that is an increase of 34%.
The article tells us that the second largest change was reverting farmland back to forests, so not all "change" was detrimental. Even if 22% of the land was altered, for a 34% increase in population, that isn't as bad as it sounds. Even taking into account that a lot of that land is so remote or desolate as to be unusable.
Yay Humans! (Score:3)
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.
22 percent? (Score:1)
Shocking - and this One Little Trick works... (Score:2)
Shocking, just shocking !!! Shocking I tell you.
Is that title now the anti-attention grabber on tech websites. I don't care how real the article may be, but I'm not going to read it simply because the title turns me off.