Mountain Top Removal and Deforestation Throughout the Eastern Seaboard from 2006-2010
Visualizations by
Alex Kekesi
Released on July 23, 2012
Humans actively change the Earth's landscape. Some of these changes can be seen from space through careful analysis of satellite data. In this visualization, we fly over the United States eastern seaboard highlighting large areas of deforestation and mountain top removal (in shades of orange and red) throughout the region. NASA scientists have worked on complex algorithms that allow us to see these changes through time more easily. The data depicted here covers the years 2006-2010. Areas in orange and red are the regions have have sustained the greatest change in this 4 year period. Oranges areas represent older change (closer to 2006) and darker reds are more current (2010). Only areas with greater than 25% tree cover are shown in shades of green. A muted gray-brown color is used for areas with less than 25% tree cover.
GCMD keywords can be found on the Internet with the following citation:
Olsen, L.M., G. Major, K. Shein, J. Scialdone, S. Ritz, T. Stevens, M. Morahan, A. Aleman, R. Vogel, S. Leicester, H. Weir, M. Meaux, S. Grebas, C.Solomon, M. Holland, T. Northcutt, R. A. Restrepo, R. Bilodeau, 2013. NASA/Global Change Master Directory (GCMD) Earth Science Keywords. Version 8.0.0.0.0