The Art of Mapping on the Run

[unhappycamper]

RETREATING The Aral Sea in Central Asia, left, in 1967, has shrunk by 75 percent to its present size, right, because of water diversions.


The Art of Mapping on the Run
By ANDREW C. REVKIN
Published: September 9, 2007

It used to be that updated editions of world atlases mainly tracked the shifting of borders and changes in the names of cities and countries determined by politics, diplomacy or war.

The surface of the planet itself was a relatively constant template in the background. You could render it in more detail with, say, better satellite data, but the basics didn’t change much.

Now, though, the accelerating and intensifying impact of human activities is visibly altering the planet, requiring ever more frequent redrawing not only of political boundaries, but of the shape of Earth’s features themselves.

~snip~

In the new edition of “The Times Comprehensive Atlas of the World” (Times Books, London, 2007), for instance, there are before-and-after views of the Aral Sea, once the world’s fourth-largest lake. It shriveled as Soviet-era irrigation projects siphoned off the rivers that replenished it. A dam completed in 2005 now prevents water from flowing out of the lake’s northern lobe, which is expanding as a result.

The lake’s vanishing and rebirth, easily visible from space, are the work of people.

~snip~

“We can literally see environmental disasters unfolding before our eyes,” he said in a news release last week.



Rest of article at: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/09/weekinreview/08basic.html?_r=1&ref=science&oref=slogin

[ChairmanAgnostic]

1. what is worse is the salinization of the

surrounding land. Even if they reversed the flow, the lands are too poisoned for any plants. They have created a dead zone that will last for decades, if not centuries.

[Atman]

2. Natl' Geo said the diversion of water in China has changed the wobble of Earth

Seriously. In National Geographic's big "WATER" issue a few years ago, they said China has diverted so much water to central locations, and via their massive dam projects, that scientists have actually been able to detect a measurable change in the way the earth wobbles while rotating on its axis. That's a pretty freaking thought, and a pick "fuck you" to the naysayers who think man can't alter the planet that much.

.