E-Atlas

Google have recently released an amazing new product that the E-Atlas team thought you would find interesting and useful. Google have brought together all the Landsat imagery (approx. 2,000,000 scene images and 980 TB of data) and created a time animation over the last 28 years of the entire world. You can zoom and pan to any location and see the progression of change in the landscape.

The imagery is most useful for studying land changes and not the marine environment. Each yearly image uses the clearest part of the year (i.e. when there are no clouds) and as a result it does not show flood events.

Examples include:

1. Townsville’s expansion over the last 28 years. Note how dry the dam was in the mid 1980’s.
http://earthengine.google.org/#timelapse/v=-19.26674,146.77732,9.901,latLng&t=0.02

2. Moving sand dunes in off of Brisbane and possibly sand mining.
http://earthengine.google.org/#timelapse/v=-27.37774,153.41441,10.356,latLng&t=2.84

3. Expansion of agriculture around the mouth of the Burdekin River.
http://earthengine.google.org/#timelapse/v=-19.66852,147.31793,9.348,latLng&t=1.56

4. Creation of Lake Proserpine in 1991.
http://earthengine.google.org/#timelapse/v=-20.32587,148.44875,9.14,latLng&t=1.62

5. Gladstone Harbour Expansion.
http://earthengine.google.org/#timelapse/v=-23.82554,151.21819,10.052,latLng&t=2.21

6. Atherton Tablelands. Some riparian strips have improved; more forest areas have been cleared.
http://earthengine.google.org/#timelapse/v=-17.26681,145.47608,10.812,latLng&t=2.87