[imagesource: Pixabay]

A new innovation from the Google Earth team, in collaboration with the World Resources Institute, means that now users can watch the face of the earth morph and alter in real-time.

Dubbed ‘Dynamic World‘ by its creators, the feature uses satellite technology to build composite, according to Fast Company, moving maps of (destructive) natural phenomena such as the 2021 Caldor Fire, in California.

Released yesterday on June 9, Dynamic Earth uses a colour key to represent different topographies, such as water, trees, grass, flooded vegetation, crops, shrub and scrub, and snow and ice, among others:

Today we are proud to announce Dynamic World, the first near real-time global 10m land cover dataset, with @WorldResources, to quantify planetary changes and take action. Powered by @Google #EarthEngine + AI + daily @ESA_EO Sentinel-2 data.

Learn more → https://t.co/9iVvBOqI4i

— Rebecca Moore (@rebeccatmoore) June 9, 2022

A piece in Gizmodo explains how “each pixel in the dataset represents around 1,100 square feet, using AI to conclude how likely a different type of ground covering will be available in that space.”

As well as showcasing the potential of new technologies to facilitate universal access to otherwise niche scientific data, Dynamic Earth was created with a view to informing people’s cognisance of how we act on the environment.

Giving users a window into how the earth’s topography is changing on a near-constant basis, helps us to establish a sense of causality between what we do and what that does to our planet, in turn.

Fred Stolle, the deputy director of the World Resources Institute’s Forests Program, has said that the statistical data that scientists used to rely on – and receive in five-year intervals – is “clearly not good enough anymore. We’re changing so fast, and the impact is so fast, that satellites are now the way to go.”

As well as its forest fire-tracking function, Dynamic Earth has introduced a feature that enables users to assess air quality, but according to Gizmodo’s report, this function is still relying on fairly limited data and has presumably not yet reached its full potential.

The Dynamic Earth team is encouraging people to get online and play with the app, in order to familiarise themselves with the technology, learn how it works, and gain new and critical insights into how the world is changing.

In other words, zoom in on a swathe of the planet, and you may just be rewarded with the bigger picture.

[sources:fastcompany&gizmodo]