Exploring Visual Evidence of Human Impact on the Environment with Planetary-Scale Zoomable Timelapse Video
Abstract
Visual evidence ignites curiosity and inspires advocacy. Zoomable imagery and video on a planetary scale provides compelling evidence of human impact on the environment. Earth Timelapse places the observable impact of 30+ years of human activity into the hands of policy makers, scientists, and advocates, with fluidity and speed that supports inquiry and exploration. Zoomability enables compelling narratives and ready apprehension of environmental changes, connecting human-scale evidence to regional and ecosystem-wide trends and changes. Leveraging the power of Google Earth Engine, join us to explore 30+ years of Landset 30m RGB imagery showing glacial retreat, agricultural deforestation, irrigation expansion, and the disappearance of lakes. These narratives are enriched with datasets showing planetary forest gain/loss, annual cycles of agricultural fires, global changes in the health of coral reefs, trends in resource extraction, and of renewable energy development. We demonstrate the intuitive and inquiry-enabling power of these planetary visualizations, and provide instruction on how scientists and advocates can create and share or contribute visualizations of their own research or topics of interest.
- Publication:
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AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2016
- Bibcode:
- 2016AGUFMIN54A..08S
- Keywords:
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- 0845 Instructional tools;
- EDUCATIONDE: 1926 Geospatial;
- INFORMATICSDE: 1928 GIS science;
- INFORMATICSDE: 1992 Virtual globes;
- INFORMATICS