Tuesday, October 5, 2010

Interesting Maps of the World


This is a global map from the European Commission representing estimated travel time to major cites. The lighter color (yellow) represents a travel time less than 6 hours while the darker colors represent a travel time up to 10 days. I find it amazing how major global cities are capable of getting to any other destination on the planet in a matter of hours or a couple days. This map also indicates areas with extremely low to zero population density due to extreme climate and living conditions. This map is also a product of an extremely complex system of global flows between people, objects, and data.



This is a satellite photo displaying night-time electricity use throughout the world from NASA.  It illustrates the extent of urban development, population density, energy consumption/distribution, and global economic activity all on a global scale. What I find most interesting about this map is that it displays the geographic distribution of cities mainly concentrated in the eastern United States, all of Europe, China, and India. Also this map is not a photo instead it is an image made from data from the Defense Meteorological Satellite program displaying permanent lights on the surface of the Earth.



This is a World fire map from September 2, 2009 from The Fire Information for Resource Management System (FIRMS) funded by NASA. Each fire detection on the map represents the center of one-kilometer pixel where one or more real-time fires are actively burning. What I find most interesting about this map is the huge portion of our planet that is actively burning. I am curious as to what percent of these fires are from natural causes (lightning) vs. human causes (agricultural burning and land clearing). An article below this map also talks about how the only fire on September 2, 2009 that made the world news was in Hollywood, CA while it looks like the whole southern part of Africa and most of South America is burning.



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