Urban Growth in Las Vegas

  • Released Friday, March 15, 2019
  • Updated Thursday, October 13, 2022 at 12:56PM
  • ID: 30215

The city of Las Vegas—meaning the meadows—was established in 1905. Its grassy meadows and artesian springs attracted settlers traveling across the arid Desert Southwest in the early 1800s. In the 1930s, gambling became legalized and construction of the Hoover Dam began, resulting in the city's first growth spurt. Since then, Las Vegas has not stopped growing. Population has reached nearly two million over the past decade, becoming one of the fastest growing metropolitan areas in the world. These false-color images show the rapid urbanization of Las Vegas between 1972 and 2018. The city streets and other impervious surfaces appear gray, while irrigated vegetation appears red. Over the years, the expansion of irrigated vegetation (e.g., lawns and golf courses) has stretched the city’s desert bounds.


Credits

Please give credit for this item to:
NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center


Missions

This visualization is related to the following missions:

Datasets used in this visualization

Landsat-1 (Collected with the MSS sensor)
Landsat-2 (Collected with the MSS sensor)
Landsat-3 (Collected with the MSS sensor)
Landsat-4 (Collected with the MSS sensor)
Landsat-5 (Collected with the TM sensor)
Landsat-7 (Collected with the ETM+ sensor)
Landsat-8 Band Combination 5, 4, 3 (Collected with the OLI sensor)

Note: While we identify the data sets used in these visualizations, we do not store any further details nor the data sets themselves on our site.



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