Visualizing the human footprint [OC]

Image from i.redditmedia.com and submitted by Reldresal
image showing Visualizing the human footprint [OC]

Reldresal on July 3rd, 2018 at 00:03 UTC »

Some context: I recently worked on a multimedia piece examining the planet-wide impacts of our species. (You can see that here.) The project required interactive, 3D maps, but I’m a sucker for old-fashioned static cartography, and so I produced this graphic as a standalone viz. Are the maps particularly novel? No, not really. Still, I think it’s pretty cool to see these networks side-by-side. I especially like how the continents are clearly visible, despite the lack of a reference layer.

Tools: R (for wrangling the flight path data), ArcGIS Pro (for designing the maps), Illustrator (for layout)

Sources: UNBC/WCS/ETH Zurich/UQ/JCU/CUNY/CIESIN (human footprint); CIESIN (population density); UN DESA (world cities); Benjamin Halpern, Melanie Frazier, John Potapenko, Kenneth Casey, Kellee Koenig, et al. 2015 (shipping lanes); OpenFlights.org (commercial flights); TeleGeography.com (undersea cables); Esri (world roads)

LordOfTehGames on July 3rd, 2018 at 01:32 UTC »

A few things

1.) I never knew how populated West Africa is. (Where Ghana, Ivory Coast, and Nigeria are)

2.) Holy fuck India, chillax

3.) Did not know there were that many undersea cables, damn.

4.) I also like the 3 roads going through the Sahara, I wonder how many gas stations there are alongside them. I’d imagine not many.

5.) I knew the Amazon was big, but that black hole in population is gigantic.

Excellent work OP

SOwED on July 3rd, 2018 at 02:51 UTC »

Wow Australia just disappears when it comes to population density. Makes sense though. Their population is less than that of South Korea.