With the click of a mouse, a new mapping tool shows how places in the American West have changed over the last 70 years.
You can type a place or address into the search bar, then zoom in or out. Search for “Lake Powell” and watch the Colorado River’s red rock canyons of the past turn into a reservoir. Type in “Las Vegas” and see Sin City’s sprawling grid of streets disappear into desert arroyos as you swipe back in time.
The free tool is an easy way for anyone with an interest in the American West to peruse the past. But Landscape Explorer also has a loftier purpose: helping government agencies, landowners and conservation professionals make complex decisions about how to manage land.
The powerful visual contrast between the historical snapshot and modern-day satellite imagery “allows us to go from zero to 100” in terms of understanding ecosystem changes, says Scott Morford, an applied spatial ecologist at the University of Montana in Missoula who led the development of Landscape Explorer. The project was supported by Working Lands for Wildlife, a conservation initiative led by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and other partners. The impetus, Morford says, was to “give us a reference for how rapidly things are changing across biomes that we care about.”
2023-12-06 08:00:00
Post from www.sciencenews.org