Wednesday, May 17, 2017

Mapping One Year of Life on Earth


A Breathing Earth is an animated map showing the seasonal growth and fall of the world's vegetation over one year. The map shows the extent of vegetation around the world for every week in 2016.

To create the map the 'greenness' variable in satellite imagery of the Earth has been mapped for all 52 weeks of the year. This greenness variable is determined from satellite images from the VIIRS sensor on board the Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership (SNPP) satellite.

To create the optimal animated map of a year's vegetation the developers tested a number of different web technologies. Links to the canvas and WebGL versions of the map can be found at the very bottom of the page on A Breathing Earth.

No comments: