Thanks to NASA Satellites, You Can Now Watch Humans Changing the Earth in GIF Form

Twenty-eight years doesn’t seem like a large enough amount of time to impact the surface of the Earth, but under NASA’s watchful Earth-observing satellite eyes, we’ve actually done quite a bit.

NASA, in conjunction with  the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), Google and TIME magazine, revealed almost three decades worth of time-lapses on Thursday as part of TIME’s exclusive “Timelapse Project.”

Besides such startling images as the Columbia Glacier retreating in the GIF above, the project also allows you to zoom into certain regions whose time-lapse images have been cleaned up by Google.

Navigating through the project is currently a bit wonky--perhaps due to mass interest--but the stand-alone GIFs posted on Google+ deserve their own in-depth exploration.

This is Iran’s Lake Urmia, shrinking by 50-percent, according to Iranian official estimates:

Drought, “misguided irrigation policies, development, and the damming of rivers that feed it” have all contributed to Lake Urmia’s decreased size and its banks devolution into a salt field.

Farmers who have grown fruits and vegetables for years in the region are now worried about dust storms distributing Lake Urmia’s free-form salt over their crops, in a threat they are calling “salt tsunamis.”

Free form table salt blowing in the wind doesn’t sound like a big deal, but when you are talking Lake Urmia amounts you might as well talk about ancient warfare. “Salting the Earth” was a wartime myth spread across Asia and Europe about ancient armies cursing civilizations--or trying to stunt their growth--by destroying their land with salt. The legend of Carthage and its demise has Rome sacking it, enslaving its populace, and destroying its fields with sodium chloride.

Someone into conspiracy theories might say this is the CIA destabilizing the Middle East (and Iran) with a food shortage, but that’s probably not what's happening here. This is human error.

In 2012, Iran starting calling the damage potential of Lake Urma’s salt a "national environmental catastrophe," and enlisted the help of tiny neighbor Armenia in pumping water back into the lake.

Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia has been sucking out water from the Pleistocene era to build this:

These extensive irrigated fields are not suburban sprawl. New oil drilling technology has given way to better wells and irrigation technology, which has allowed Saudi Arabian farmers to tap into reservoirs created by glaciers that existed more than 10,000 years ago.

Saudi Arabia wants its own lush farm fields, and is pouring out extensive amounts of funding to get it. While these ancient reservoirs cannot be replenished, the government has built dams and other infrastructure to support their agricultural growth.

"Nowhere in the world is a government giving more support to farmers," an Irish cattleman working in Riyadh told Saudi Aramco World, a bi-monthly journal by an oil company in the region.

Technology has enabled Dubai to experiment with Earth’s water as well, by building resort islands on the ocean along its coastline:

The palm-tree-free Palm Islands seen in the GIF have been called by some as the 8th Wonder of the World for being the largest man-made islands in history. Built by the Dubai-based developer Nakheel Properties, who made $98.6 million off the deal, only one of the islands is accessible to tourists. The rest are residential, housing 4,000 villas with many still unoccupied or unfinished. Meanwhile, Dubai’s World Islands are sinking back into the sea, according to a British lawyer suing Nakheel Properties.

Besides expanding over water, Dubai has substantially increased its size along the coastline, and commissioned some of the most experimental buildings ever seen, including an underwater hotel. Jim Krane, a Gulf expert at Cambridge University's Judge Business School, even wrote a book about Dubai’s ridiculously quick expansion, titled "Dubai: The Story of the World's Fastest City."

Sheik Mohammed bin Rashid al Maktoum--who commissioned all these projects reshaping the land and sea around Dubai--has a specific vision for the city: bustling tourism and business centers will help the city survive the drying of oil wells first discovered in the country in 1966.  United Emirates government reports estimate depletion in 2020.

Back in the United States, Wyoming’s coal mining empire is clearly visible from space:

The Wyoming Mining Association estimates the state produces 40 percent of the nation’s coal, and in 2011 contributed 1.2 billion in taxes to Wyoming's coffers. Environmental groups in the area, like the Sierra Club and the Powder River Basin Resource Council, have been asking coal companies to slow their roll in the area since 2010, in the form of not-so-friendly lawsuits. Citizens are worried about water reserves; pollution in the air, soil, and water; and wildlife living in the area.

A little further south, you can see Las Vegas’ entering its current form known as the “megaresort” era:

Started by the opening of the infamous--if not now dated--hotel The Mirage in 1989, which then spawned “the Las Vegas Strip,” the city’s image as a commercially gaudy casino paradise is a three decade-long invention.

The lake nearby, Lake Mead, has seen water levels retreat enough that four marinas along its shores have been shut down in recent years. While the decreasing water levels are nowhere near Lake Urmia levels, the potential of a fifth marina closing down in January of this year prompted neighbors to organize in protest.

No official study has directly linked Las Vegas’ growth with the declining water levels in Lake Mead, though an uptick in water usage has been cited as an issue.

Further south still, to a different land mass, we have the declining Amazonian rain forest:

The deforestation of Brazil’s Amazon rain forest continues at an alarming pace: In 2004, the Centre for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) concluded the decrease of the forest between 1991 and 2000 amounted to the size of Spain or Madagascar. Cool animals in need of the Amazon as a habitat include jaguars, toucans, and those colorful poison dart frogs.

Declining water levels and deforestation, new islands and agricultural lands, sprawling cities and mines; our impact on the Earth’s surface over the next 30 years will be even more substantial, not less, as the population grows. These GIFs are likely only a hint of what's to home in the next 28 years.