Google teamed up with the USGS to animate 30 years of archived satellite data from the Landsat program. The visualizations allow us to see our impacts on Earth. Jeffrey Kluger of TIME writes about the time-lapse project:
For governments and environmental scientists, there is a lot of arcane data to extract from the maps and movies. For everyone else, there is something subtler but just as important: perspective. We tend our own tiny plots on Earth, our houses and yards often taking up less room than that infield-size pixel. It’s only when we get above ourselves — say, 438 miles above — that we can see how we’re changing our planet and begin to consider how we can be better stewards of it.
Google at its best. You can check out the videos here.
(via: Mark Laufersweiler from Derek Stratman)