Map showing how global warming will influence sea level in your city

By Aleks Buczkowski



This year, similarly to the previous one, will be the warmest year ever recorded. We may argue about the measurement methodology and accuracy but today no one doubts that climate change and global warming are facts rather than crazy theories of Al Gore. Ongoing 2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Paris only confirms it.

We don’t know how this change will influence natural disasters, we can however quite precisely estimate how the rising sea level will affect places and cities we live in. Climate Central, an independent US-based environmental awareness organisation, used the latest PNAS data and created a really cool Google Maps mash-up which answers this question.

The project is called Mapping Choices and it lets you choose any city in the world to see what rising seas will do to it based on a range of projections about how high sea levels could increase. In addition the app lets you configure your view to compare side-by-side how different responses to curb pollution will impact the environment differently, resulting in a range of potential sea-level scenarios.

Click here for the Mapping Choices project.

In addition Climate Central created cool videos with visualizations of how the rising sea level will affect the landscape of cities around the world.

Scientists are not yet sure what will be the exact characteristics of the rising sea level. The estimations say about the level of between 4.2 meters and 10 meters until 2100. In theory it’s a lot of time. In practice our children or grandchildren may still witness it. Multiple countries including China and the US are critical about introducing policies to reduce the carbon dioxide emissions due to economic reasons but as Climate Central explains on its website that “the sea level rise we map may take centuries to play out, but we set it in motion today.” And we are obligated to future generations to do something about it.

Source: Geoawesomeness

Watch: How Europe is greener now than 100 years ago

By Rick Noack

Within the last 100 years, Europe has experienced two World Wars, the end of communism, the emergence of the European Union and a series of other transformative political and economic developments. A team of scientists has now been able to visualize the impact of historical events in maps that show the growth and decline of settlements, forests and croplands.

The map, shown above, is the result of a research project led by Dutch scholar Richard Fuchs from the University of Wageningen. Besides regional political and economic trends, Europe's landscape was shaped by several larger developments of the 20th century, according to Fuchs.

The following maps preview some of the affected regions which we will explain and show in detail throughout this post.

"More than 100 years ago, timber was used for almost everything: as fuel wood, for metal production, furniture, house construction. Hence, at around 1900 there was hardly any forest areas left in Europe. Especially after World War II, many countries started massive afforestation programs which are still running today," Fuchs told The Washington Post.

As a result, Europe's forests grew by a third over the last 100 years. At the same time, cropland decreased due to technological innovations such as motorization, better drainage and irrigation systems: Relatively fewer area was needed to produce the same amount of food. Furthermore, many people migrated from rural to urban areas, or overseas.

Fuchs' fascinating conclusion: Forests and settlements grew at the same time and Europe is a much greener continent today than it was 100 years ago. A closer look at different regions and countries reveals Europe's recovery from the deforestation of past centuries.

In France, Spain and Italy, reforestation was particularly visible

In the southern French region of Vaucluse, entire mountain ranges were de-forested at the beginning of the 20th century, but the country invested heavily to reverse the trend. Meanwhile, agricultural projects in southern Spain transformed once arid, barren areas into profitable agricultural fields or even forests.

A similar development was documented in Italy. Former cropland were abandoned due to market competition, urbanization and emigration. Today, many parts of the Apennine Mountains (located on the right side of the map below) are dominated by grasslands and forests again.

The end of communism also led to forest growth in eastern Europe

In eastern Europe, many forests re-grew after the end of the Soviet Union. Fuchs and his colleagues explain the development with the fact that many privatized agricultural farms were less competitive on the global market. Therefore, farmers abandoned unprofitable cropland. Particularly in Romania and Poland, former cropland was taken back by nature afterward, first turning into grassland and later into forests.

In the 1990s, Europe also introduced a Common Agricultural Policy which stated that only highly productive areas should be used as cropland, in order to prevent inefficiency. Hence, fields got continuously bigger to better manage and maintain them with machines. Marginal land, however, was given up.

Scandinavian forests recovered to supply other countries

To the north of formerly communist Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, Scandinavian countries were able to re-grow most of their forests (and are continuing to do so today) to keep up with timer demand, as they substituted most other suppliers in Europe that had practically used up most of their own wood resources.

Elsewhere, re-forestation programs soon had a visible impact, as well...

... as more and more people moved into urban areas 

What you see here is among of the most populous areas of Europe: London (the growing, red area in the upper part of the picture), Paris (lower left side), and Brussels (in the middle). Although London experienced its most significant population growth in the 19th century, the city's suburbs grew massively in the 20th century and continue to do so.

The city of Paris itself actually lost inhabitants over the 20th century due to gentrification and higher rents, but you can clearly see how its suburbs became more and more populous throughout the century.

Britain recovered from excessive timber demand, as theNetherlands expanded its forests

Both the Netherlands and Britain had empires that relied heavily on the sea and their naval strength. In order to build ships, they needed wood -- and in 1900, only 2 - 3 percent of their territory was still covered with forests. Both countries have since been able to increase their forest area to 10-12 percent, as data from 2010 shows. The Netherlands also pursued another major project, visible on maps: It reclaimed the Zuiderzee bay with dams and drainage systems to gain more land.

A closer look at England and Ireland shows that both countries are nevertheless still mainly covered with grassland, while re-forestation has been particularly successful in Scotland.

Lazaro Gamio contributed to this post.

Source: The Washington Post

Daily satellite tracking of harmful algae blooms for the Great Lakes now online!

Harmful algae blooms threaten drinking water, aquaculture industries and the public welfare. A significant bloom was recently forecasted for Lake Erie: NOAA predicts that this year’s blooms will be “among the most severe in recent years” and will peak in September ( http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov).

The bloom is now tracked daily on the free algae bloom monitoring program developed by EOMAP for the Great Lakes region. The solution provides an easy online access throughhttp://eoapp-us.eomap.com/. EOMAP also tracks the vast number of smaller lakes and coastal waters globally using its multi-satellite monitoring system and displays this data on the eoApp web application.

Aside from single, daily products, EOMAP’s eoApp®-US also provides spatially and temporally aggregated data: daily means (D’mean) and moving, weekly means (M’mean).

The eoapp monitoring system allows for tracking blue algae blooms and relevant water quality parameters such as chlorophyll and turbidity. Various US and European satellite sensors are imbedded into this first globally harmonized monitoring system, supporting daily monitoring at continental scales, historical reviews up to 30 years back in time and highest spatial resolutions for ponds, small lakes and rivers.

Matt Bergin, Vice President of business Development at EOMAP states that ‘EOMAP supports European and US research initiatives to understand and forecast harmful algae blooms. The heavy bloom in 2015 was already well detected and well accessible through eoApp. The algorithm developed by EOMAP detects blue algae containing phycocyanin pigments. It is imbedded into the proprietary, state-of-the-art satellite data processors of EOMAP, which already are installed in several satellite receiving and archiving centers to support the most cost efficient and fast production.’

References:EOMAP Web Application US:

http://eoapp-us.eomap.com
EOMAP Water Quality Information Booklet:

http://www.eomap.com/exchange/EOMAP_Information_Booklet_Water_Quality_Monitoring.pdf

For more information, contact:

Matt Bergin: Matthew.bergin@eomap.com

About EOMAP GmbH & Co. KG
EOMAP is the leading commercial provider in satellite-derived information on coastal and inland waters, acting worldwide as an operational mapping service provider for the offshore industry and environmental agencies. Pioneering in the field of satellite-derived high resolution water quality and bathymetry, EOMAP solutions rely on standardized physical models which are independent of scale, sensor type, and geographic location. Key services also include seafloor, coastal environment and infrastructure mapping. EOMAP value adding services can be applied at regional through to intercontinental scales, providing continuous and long term environmental information through integrating multiple satellite resources.

To learn more about EOMAP visit www.eomap.com

Credits Figure Figure1_eoapp_HAB.jpg: EOMAP’s web application eoApp for tracking Harmful Algae Blooms, © EOMAP, Donets – Fotolia, base maps © Thunderforest

Source

Teledyne Optech showing new tools for collecting GIS data at Esri 2015 UC

Teledyne Optech announces that it will be showcasing some of its latest sensors at the Esri 2015 User Conference in San Diego on July 20-24, highlighting the game changing Optech Galaxy and innovative Optech ILRIS and UAV merging technology in particular.

The Optech Galaxy is the latest configurable ultra-compact airborne lidar designed to improve collection efficiency and productivity, and will be on display in booth # 2412. Stop by to learn how Galaxy’s PulseTRAK technology is cutting cost and complexity from the surveying process and maintaining an even swath width in varying mountainous terrain with its SwathTRAK mode.

The integrated ILRIS and UAV solution combines the best of highly detailed long range terrestrial lidar and more general UAV photogrammetry for more complete 3D data — perfect for capturing all sides of structures, hazardous areas, and mines from a safe distance.

In addition, visitors will see some amazing data results from the new Optech Titan system, the world’s first commercial multispectral airborne lidar. Titan launches a new era in remote sensing by using three laser channels with separate wavelengths to collect 3D geospatial data, the results embedded with rich spectral identification information for applications such as tree species identification, environmental modeling, and improved target classification.

Source