Scientists wanted to know how the planet's physical features were mapped onto geological structures. Irons says that it's aesthetically beautiful and that you can see the geology in your textbooks.
The pictures and the data undergirding them began to show how Earth was shifting underneath its residents. The rainforest is disappearing and glaciers are retreating. Irons says, "From admiring how beautiful the surface of the Earth was to understanding that humans are having a profound impact on the appearance"
Scientists can watch a full movie of how humans have changed the world thanks to Landsat. Those who want to study one of Plato's basic natural elements, one that is both caused by and affects humanity: fire, can benefit from its long record and current-tense scenery.
What Landsat data has to say about the Black Fire, which as of late June had burned more than 325,000 acres and had become the second- largest fire in New Mexico's history, is of interest to scientists. The Global Fire Emission Database keeps track of how much the planet burns each month and how emissions like carbon, carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, methane, and nitrous oxide are released into the air.
Morton uses the data to look at areas that are actively burned, to look at areas that are likely to become flammable, and then to follow the recovery after fires occur. Landsat gives us all the information we need.
Over four weeks, WIRED is publishing a series of stories about the scientific uses of satellites. Read other stories in the series here, here and here.
In the past two decades, Morton has seen fires grow in both size and regularity in places like the Western United States and the pine-laden, northern forests of Siberia. In the tropics, fires have been decreasing over the past two decades. Open spaces can be transformed into woods. It means the land can absorb more carbon and help slow climate change. It is not an unalloyed good that animals have less space to eat. It has been a tale of two realities.
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