Global land cover change from 8000 BP to -50 BP‬

This animation shows the global pattern of human land use over the last eight thousand years, a time when human populations began expanding following the origins of agriculture. The earliest areas of human land use are in Mesopotamia and the Fertile Crescent areas of southwest Asia, followed by increasing areas of land use in China, India, and Europe. Watch for the areas of intensive land use developing in India, especially along the Ganges River plane, and in Northern China along the lower Yellow and Yangtze rivers. As time goes on, you will see areas of land use developing in South America, along the Andes, and in Africa, especially in the Sahel region. By classical times, land use in Europe is very intense with up to 60% of the land under human uses, but we start to see fluctuations around this time too, with some areas abandoned corresponding with wars, famine, and other historical events that affected human populations. As time continues through the Middle Ages and Renaissance, land use in Europe and Chine increase greatly following the development of cities and towns. Now pay careful attention to South America. Following the first contact with Europeans around 1500, nearly 90% of the indigenous people of the Americas were killed, mainly by disease. This collapse in populations led to massive regrowth of natural vegetation, especially forests in the Amazon, Andes, and Mesoamerica. As we race towards modern times we see the settlement of the Americas and Australia by Europeans spreading across the continents, and the development of the human-dominated world we have today.

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• ARVE
• EPFL
• research
• ALCC
• animation

[vaith777]

Great animation! I'm just curious as to why areas like the Sahara and Australian Outback remain covered in natural vegetation? Are we to assume that by 'natural vegetation' you mean land which hasn't been cleared for human activity? In other words, that a desert is technically covered in natural vegetation because no humans have cleared the land for cultivation?

[arvegroup]

@vaith777 Yes, you are absolutely right! Even though many deserts are only sparsely vegetated, they have, by and large, not been extensively modified for human land uses. This is especially true for large parts of the Sahara and the interior of Australia.

Thanks for your comment!

[munroe9ify]

Remember that land use isn't land cover!! It shows the global pattern of land cover DUE (in large part) to human land use, but it's not one and the same.

[trevallyn]

@bcrounse Slowing down the last 200 years would sort of defeat some of the purpose of the video which presumably is to highlight the rapid changes that have taken place within that time period.

I do think a visual indicator of time along the bottom, like a sliding scale would be helpful. Be easier to view at the same time as watching the map, than having to read the numbers.

[sendungde]

@bcrounse I second that! I have a hard time making sense from the BP time scale.

[jennijapanime]

Citations?

[bcrounse]

Very interesting! For future work, might I suggest adding a BC/AD timescale as well? There's a lot of action in the past ~500 years, and I found myself mentally trying to convert the BP timescale to AD, in order to mentally align what is happening on the map with historical dates. It would probably also be helpful to slow down the last ~200 years or so.