![]() The two most famous islands are shaped like palm trees. Rocky barriers were put in place to protect them from erosion. To promote beach tourism, the city built hundreds of artificial islands along the coast using sand dredged from the seashore. These images show the rapid growth of Dubai, in the United Arab Emirates, between 20. ![]() Some cities have gotten creative about urban growth, reclaiming land from the sea. 3) Dubai builds a chain of artificial islandsĭubai, United Arab Emirates, seen in 20. The fact that more people now live on Mexico's coast also increases their vulnerability to hurricanes - one reason why the cost of natural disasters keeps rising worldwide. That's been a huge economic boon, though it's also meant a loss of biodiversity and polluted water. But the government pushed to turn the area into a tourist hotspot, and today it's home to 722,000 people. In the 1970s, this area was lightly inhabited, home to artisanal fishermen and empty beaches. The images above show the rapid growth of Cancún, Mexico. More than 3.9 billion people and counting now live in urban areas. ( NASA, Images of Change)Ĭities and towns have been around for thousands of years, but the growth of urbanization has been astonishing over the past century. 2) Cancún expands at a stunning rateĬancún, Mexico, seen in 19. Brazil has tried to protect its rainforests in the past decade, but pressure to clear away trees has risen again since 2013. Then repeat.ĭeforestation has all sorts of troubling side effects, from shrinking habitats for forest species to increased global warming via a reduction in carbon dioxide–absorbing trees. The newly cleared land can only sustain crops for a few years until heavy rains erode the soil, at which point it's turned over for cattle. You can see a more detailed progression in these images: New roads protrude into the forests like fishbones, with nearby trees vanishing soon after. By 2008, that was up to 34 percent - an area the size of West Virginia. In 1978, 2 percent of the state's rainforest had been cleared. The image above shows the state of Rondônia in western Brazil, one of the most deforested parts of the Amazon. Rondônia has lost an area of forest the size of West Virginia And as the world's population soars past 7 billion, the pressure for cropland is only growing. Humans have been clearing forests to make way for farms and pastures for at least 7,000 years. Satellite images of Rondônia in western Brazil, taken in 1975 (left) and 2009 (right). Here are 14 of the most revealing changes: 1) Rainforests get swallowed by farms in Brazil In its "Images of Change" series, the agency has posted a number of before-and-after images showing the exact same rainforest or glacier or city years or decades apart. So what does this look like? In recent decades, NASA has been tracking the major transformations we've wrought via satellite. "To a large extent," two scientists wrote in 2015, "the future of the only place where life is known to exist is being determined by the actions of humans." ![]() We've cleared away forests, dammed up mighty rivers, paved vast roads, and transported thousands of species around the world. Human beings have replaced nature as the dominant force shaping Earth.
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