The Age of Humans

Living in the Age of Humans is a series of Story Maps from Esri which explores the impacts of the human race on planet Earth. Human Beings have inhabited the Earth for only 10 million of the planet's 4.5 billion years. In just the last two centuries, since the beginning of the industrial age, the human race has managed to alter the Earth's ecosystem and devastate the planet's climate.

You can view how and where the human race has had an impact on planet Earth on the first story map in Living in the Age of Humans. In the Human Reach Esri explores the inexorable growth of the human population and asks the question "at what point does the human demand on Earth outpace the planet’s ability to support our species?" 

In 1950 there were 2.56 billion people on Earth. In 2021 there were more than 7 billion people.The Human Reach Story Map investigates and visualizes where all these people live on Earth. It explores the historic changes in population density arising from urbanization. Maps show how the world's population is unevenly distributed around the globe, and how future climate change is likely to impact further on this distribution. 

An Earth at Night map helps to show how urban centers burn bright at night and a Networks section uses a series of maps to show how all these urban centers are connected by networks of roads, air routes, shipping routes and telecommunication cables.