Posted on 11/16/2005 8:44:17 AM PST by cogitator
NASA Earth Observatory has this neat graph of the lawn area in the United States. It's a very close match to the "night light" image made a couple of years ago. I linked the little picture below to the bigger one (which is only 380 K). Click on the link for the accompanying article.
Yann-Arthus Bertrand took this impressive photograph of the "crater lake" inside the caldera from the Pinatubo eruption of 1991:
** ping **
I think I can see my lawn!
Why is Alaska missing? Not in the United States anymore? It's usually found about one tenth size just off the Arizona coast. Not a lot of lawns in Alaska anyway.
{facetious mode on}
They couldn't get a reliable analysis of lawn area in Alaska when there wasn't any snow cover on them.
{/facetious}
What about Hawai'i?
Long Island is mostly lawn? Fascinating map.
I fought the lawn and the lawn won!
My daughter is a HydroGeologist. I wonder if she would enjoy these photos.
I imagine the lawn area for the Hamptons mansions figured into that. And golf courses. (I noticed it too -- even thinking that the name should be changed from "Long Island" to "Lawn Island" -- but isn't that how most of the locals pronounce it anyway?)
Sure do wish I was in the lawnmower business....not!!!
I don't know. My wife is from there, but her accent is all her own.
I note that Albany, Syracuse, Rochester and Buffalo all appear as green dots, connected by a green line, wondering if the line is the median of I-90, though that seems too ridiculous for words. And the new growth along I-85 corridor through NC, which is becomeing way too crowded, shows up rather well.
It's probably not the median -- many of the interstates are discernible as dotted green lines, because small communities have probably grown up next to the interstate between larger cities. The alteration of ground cover in even a small area can be quantified, it appears.
There are a couple of places in Virginia with almost continous green lines along the interstate that might be the median strip, I-81 that parallels the VA/WestVA border and I-95 south of Richmond. Regarding the latter, I was on it relatively recently, and it still is a 2-lane interstate in both directions with a relatively wide median. So this analysis may be picking up grass in wide interstate medians.
That's right. Hawaii is also missing. Well, that's the Lower 48 for you. Parochial, the whole bunch.
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