Today,
we're making it possible for you to go back in time and get a stunning
historical perspective on the changes to the Earth’s surface over time. Working
with the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), NASA and TIME, we're releasing more
than a quarter-century of images of Earth taken from space, compiled for the
first time into an interactive time-lapse experience. We believe this is the
most comprehensive picture of our changing planet ever made available to the
public.
Built from
millions of satellite images and trillions of pixels, you can explore this
global, zoomable time-lapse map as part of TIME's new Timelapse project. View
stunning phenomena such as the sprouting of Dubai’s artificial Palm Islands,
the retreat of Alaska’s Columbia Glacier, the deforestation of the Brazilian
Amazon and urban growth in Las Vegas from 1984 to 2012:
Feel free
to share these GIFs! More examples can be found on Google+.
The images
were collected as part of an ongoing joint mission between the USGS and NASA
called Landsat. Their satellites have been observing earth from space since the
1970s—with all of the images sent back to Earth and archived on USGS tape
drives that look something like this example (courtesy of the USGS).
We started
working with the USGS in 2009 to make this historic archive of earth imagery
available online. Using Google Earth Engine technology, we sifted through
2,068,467 images—a total of 909 terabytes of data—to find the highest-quality
pixels (e.g., those without clouds), for every year since 1984 and for every
spot on Earth. We then compiled these into enormous planetary images, 1.78
terapixels each, one for each year.
As the
final step, we worked with the CREATE Lab at Carnegie Mellon University,
recipients of a Google Focused Research Award, to convert these annual Earth
images into a seamless, browsable HTML5 animation. Check it out on Google’s
Timelapse website.
Much like
the iconic image of Earth from the Apollo 17 mission—which had a profound
effect on many of us—this time-lapse map is not only fascinating to explore,
but we also hope it can inform the global community’s thinking about how we
live on our planet and the policies that will guide us in the future. A special
thanks to all our partners who helped us to make this happen.
Posted by
Rebecca Moore, Engineering Manager, Google Earth Engine & Earth Outreach
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