Friday Eye Candy: A 30-Year Timelapse Reveals Humanity's Expanding Footprint

The Google Timelapse feature has been updated. The only thing that stays the same is that everything changes.

1 minute read

December 9, 2016, 5:00 AM PST

By James Brasuell @CasualBrasuell


Google Timelapse

Houston in 1998 / Google Earth

"The team behind Google Earth released an update [in November] to the Timelapse feature of its satellite imagery app, and it’s a great way to see the rapid pace of urban development and public infrastructure projects," writes Nick Statt.

As described by the Google Earth Engine website, the Timelapse feature "is a global, zoomable video that lets you see how the Earth has changed over the past 32 years. It is made from 33 cloud-free annual mosaics, one for each year from 1984 to 2016, which are made interactively explorable by Carnegie Mellon University CREATE Lab's Time Machine library…."

The Timelapse feature launched in 2013, but the recent data brings the feature into contemporary times. A separate article by Peter Hess in Popular Science points out the obvious effects of climate change, as made visible by the Timelapse tool. Local media outlets from all over the country, like St. Louis, Los Angeles, and San Francisco, picked up news of the update as well.

Timelapse is available, in all its glory, below.

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