[Ecoed] mapping human impacts

[Boose, David]

Mike and others,

 

As I was preparing a talk on population and consumption last year, I
came across the American Association for the Advancement of Science
(AAAS) Atlas of Population and the Environment <http://atlas.aaas.org/>
. It has a number of maps on a wide variety of topics, which you can
download and use in presentations. I don't think you can download
separate layers of data for these maps, but many of them may show
different views of the same regions of the globe. Also, the World
Resources Institute maintains a site called "Earthtrends
<http://earthtrends.wri.org/index.php> ", where you will find a huge,
searchable database of statistics on a wide range of issues related to
population and consumption. I don't recall that they have a lot of
images there, but you can search and download information for specific
countries, sets of countries, regions, and years, which you can then
play around with to your heart's content. Once you have the country- or
region-specific data, someone with some GIS experience may be able to
show you how to make maps using the different data sets as layers.

 

Hope that helps.

 

David

************************************

David L. Boose, Ph.D.

Department of Biology

Gonzaga University

502 East Boone Avenue

Spokane, WA 99258

(509) 323-6634

________________________________

From: ecoed-bounces at ecoed.net [mailto:ecoed-bounces at ecoed.net] On Behalf
Of Michael Leigh
Sent: Tuesday, September 18, 2007 11:49 AM
To: ecoed at ecoed.net
Subject: [Ecoed] mapping human impacts

 

I teach environmental science, and am looking for a series of world maps
to impress upon my students the extent of direct human impacts on this
planet.  It could be a computer program or maps, or a video.  

 

Ideally, it would have "layers" that could be viewed separately or
"cumulatively", such as:  areas of current human habitation; areas of
past human habitation; roads; areas currently used for agriculture;
areas cleared for agriculture in the historic past; areas cleared by
timber harvesting; etc.  I'm not interested in trying to illustrate
indirect human impacts, given that such a map would just highlight the
entire planet-- just direct impacts.

 

So far, I haven't seen anything like this.  However, I imagine that this
sort of graphics could powerfully illustrate how extensive an impact our
1 species has had, and how important it is for us to confront this
issue.

 

Any suggestions?

  

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