Maps Show How Humans Have Reshaped Earth Since 1992
via 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.