The SEDAC Global Agricultural Cropland and Pasture data sets are presented in Food: An Atlas, which uses maps to explore global food distribution and production. The cropland and pasture data, originally developed by Ramankutty et al (2008), are transformed into cartograms, in which the land area of countries is replaced by extent of crops and pastures, by Benjamin Hennig to better visualize the magnitude of agricultural areas around the world.
Combining SEDAC’s Low Elevation Coastal Zone (LECZ) data and Natural Disaster Hotspots flood frequency maps with land cover imagery derived from NASA’s MODIS instrument, the researchers who developed SEDAC’s Global Grid of Probabilities of Urban Expansion data set ask how the global and regional patterns of urban growth in the near future will affect urban susceptibility to floods and droughts. What they found is that the extent of urban areas exposed to floods and drought will generally double by 2030, even without factoring in the potential impacts of climate change.
Map of school-age children in earthquake zones illustrates an accompanying article: following the recent earthquakes in China, experts assess school safety and the vulnerability of children to earthquakes.
Map of Pakistan illustrating areas of escalating violence in the Punjab, the country’s most populous province.
An analysis of coastal wetlands loss from sea level rise due to climate change, conducted by SEDAC for the Ramsar Convention's Scientific and Technical Review Panel, provides estimates of wetland losses as a basis for identifying potential adaptation measures. The Ramsar Wetlands of International Importance: Sea Level Rise Impacts data and related map client make use of NASA’s Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM) elevation data, SEDAC’s Global Rural-Urban Mapping Project version 1 (GRUMPv1) population density grid for the year 2000 (and a 2010 projection), the GRUMPv1 urban extents grid, and an updated version of SEDAC’s Global Subnational Infant Mortality Rates, v1 data.
Sensing Our Planet: NASA Earth Science Research Features 2008 features an article on how SEDAC data was used for the 2008 Environmental Performance Index and other environmental assessments; CIESIN’s Marc Levy is interviewed.
An embedded Google Earth client in an article in Nature News shows the population count living within 75 kilometers of each of the world′s nuclear power plants. Population increases with circle size and color, from green (< 0.5 million) to red (> 20 million). The data and analysis were developed by SEDAC.
A complex spatial relationship between population density and fire exists across the globe. This study looked at this relationship by comparing population density data from SEDAC’s Gridded Population of the World to burned area maps based largely on NASA MODIS satellite observations. In general it finds that in regions where climate or vegetation create conditions where fire is likely, people tend to suppress the fire, whereas in less fire-prone regions people tend to let the fire spread. In most regions of the world, increased population density initially leads to an increase in burned area but that relationship reverses at higher levels of population density.
This article in the annual anthology, Sensing Our Planet: NASA Earth Science Research Features 2012, describes how economists have used night-time lights satellite data together with SEDAC human settlements data as a measure of economic growth, complementing traditional economic data. The researchers combined a dataset produced by NOAA’s National Geophysical Data Center from the Defense Meteorological Satellite Program (DMSP) with SEDAC’s Global Rural-Urban Mapping Project version 1 (GRUMPv1) Settlement Points to attribute economic activity to specific cities. The researchers, including former SEDAC staff member Adam Storeygard, show that the night-time lights data enable cross-border and subnational assessments of economic activity.
A typically higher standard of living in urban areas compared to rural ones does not rule out striking disparities within cities. SEDAC data from its Global Poverty Mapping Project is used as the basis for this map. Map 1.2, illustration for Chapter 1--Density, The World Development Report Online 2009.
Tornadoes account for about one in five natural hazard-related deaths in the United States. This recent study investigated the relationships between tornado casualties (injuries and deaths), storm energy, and population using the NASA SEDAC Gridded Population of the World (GPW) v4 data set. For all tornadoes, investigators found that a doubling of population increased the casualty rate by 21% while a doubling of storm energy increased the casualty rate by 33%. For the strongest storms casualty rates from increases in population and storm energy were even greater. These estimates can be used to project future changes in casualties given known population and storm trends.
This interactive map shows the population missing as a result of the Haiti earthquake on January 28, 2010. Thousands of personal reports of loved ones missing were provided to Ireport, and this information was combined with SEDAC population data to create the map.
A map of Burma, based on the SEDAC Gridded Population of the World (GPW) data product, reveals that coastal areas hit hardest by the cyclone in May 2008 were highly populated. (Areas in progressively darker shades of brown represent increased population.)
In this blog for the Center Environmental and Security Program (ECSP), CIESIN deputy director Marc Levy talks with ECSP director Geoff Dabelko about using the Gridded Population of the World (GPW) data product to aid in combining population and geographic data.
A CNN video newscast refers to a map of the path of Cyclone Nargis and the populations affected, in the worst natural disaster in the recorded history of Burma (Myanmar).
The SEDAC data set Low-elevation Coastal Zone (LECZ) is the basis for a set of national-level indicators of the total area and population in the LECZ circa 2000. Map 2.2 (page 94), Chapter 2 of the World Development Report 2010, Managing Urban Growth and Flood Risk in a Changing Climate in South and Southeast Asia.
A five-part article examines the implications of world population growth beyond seven billion; SEDAC's Human Footprint data shows where Earth been most impacted.
Human impacts have resulted in a global tendency for tree cover to be constrained to sloped terrain and losses to be concentrated on flat terrain. This effect, which the researchers quantify using NASA’s Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) and Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM) satellite instruments, increases in strength with increasing human pressure, as measured by SEDAC’s Human Influence Index data set. It is most pronounced in countries with rapidly growing economies, limited human population stress, and highly effective governments, as defined in SEDAC’s Environmental Sustainability Index. By combining these measures of human influence with the remote sensing of trees, the researchers show how interactions between local topographic conditions and human impacts control tree cover distribution.
A map using SEDAC′s Gridded Population of the World data set to illustrate a discussion of population density and population growth, page 50 of the National Geographic Visual Atlas of the World (2009).
A map of SEDAC′s the Human Footprint illustrates the extent to which Africa′s land area is influenced by humans.
In moist regions around the globe, fire activity is believed to be driven by drought frequency, whereas in dry regions, fire is thought to be limited by the amount of fuel available. Researchers recently tested these ideas by comparing global fire activity as detected by the NASA Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) sensor with measures of vegetation such as net primary productivity from the Human Appropriation of Net Primary Productivity (HANPP) data collection available from SEDAC and the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) derived from NOAA satellite data. Although fire activity is indeed limited by droughts in moist areas and by fuel in dry regions, human activities—specifically tropical rain forest deforestation and fire suppression policies in the western U.S.—also strongly influence fire activity.
An interactive map shows impacts from the recent Haiti earthquake.
Map of China illustrates an article comparing the location of the Sichuan province earthquakes with population centers in China.
Data and maps compiled by SEDAC and the Center for Hazards and Risk Research are featured in a front-page news article in the New York Times (print version February 25) assessing the vulnerability of buildings in earthquake zones. “Where Shoddy Construction Could Mean Death” shows a map (top) that depicts the predicted number of deaths in Instanbul from a magnitude 7.5 earthquake, depending on the type of construction of the building. The second map (bottom) ranks the vulnerability of other urban areas in earthquake zones with more than one million people.
A recent survey of African forest elephants has revealed a startling reduction in that animal's population and geographic range over the past decade. Human population density, as measured by SEDAC's Gridded Population of the World (GPW v3) data set, and nearness to human infrastructure, as indicated by SEDAC's Human Influence Index (HII v2), are two of the strongest predictors of that decline along with hunting intensity, poor governance and absence of law enforcement.
Using data from the NASA Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) satellite instrument and the Advanced Land Observing Satellite Phased Array type L-Band Synthetic Aperture Radar (ALOS PALSAR) to study land subsidence, and SEDAC’s Gridded Population of the World (GPW), v3 to examine the distribution of people, investigators assessed the loss of groundwater storage in one of Mexico's most important watersheds.
Satellite data offer a particularly valuable perspective on PM2—small particles deriving mostly from burning fossil fuels and biomass, which can harm human health—because ground instruments may be unavailable or offer limited information, as is the case in China. With that in mind, researchers at Columbia University’s Earth Institute and Batelle Memorial Institute have developed maps based on satellite data that depict annual PM2.5 exposure in all of China’s provinces.
SEDAC population density data was used in a map of the Haiti earthquake.
SEDAC′s role in making climate change data freely available to the public is noted in a collection of articles on how scientists use Earth science data to learn about the planet.