Earth Science Gallery
2002 EARTH SCIENCE VIDEOTAPES
Tape Title
Record ID
Date Produced
TRT:
Synopsis
GLOBAL LAND COVER G02-064 8/13/02 00:19:51 NASA is providing striking pictures of global land use that is helping experts plan forest fire recovery, manage water resources, and protect the environment. Whether it's a forest, grassland, or city, each land cover type plays an important role in our global environment. Using the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) instrument on NASA's Terra satellite, scientists are creating Land Cover Maps that are helping them understand our changing planet.
TAPE CONTENTS:
ITEM (1): Color Key - The Earth's landscape is changing. Increasing human populations are exerting pressure on our planet's natural landscapes. These pressures have a significant influence on carbon balances between the land and the atmosphere. Carbon is the root of all life on Earth. It's the same stuff that composes lowly coal, and it's the core of proud tree trunks. Mapping land cover types, like forest, grassland, desert, and urban areas is important for stability of global food resources as well as carbon cycle changes that might result from forest loss.
This animation shows the different color categories for the Earth's land cover types used in the MODIS Land Cover Map. Forests are shown in shades of green. Less dense vegetation is in shades of yellow and orange. Permanent snow and ice are white. Wetlands are bright blue, and non-ocean water is pale blue. Urban areas are red. Barren and sparsely vegetated areas are gray.
Credit: NASA
ITEM (2): World View - This animation shows global land cover types in different colors. Each landscape has a different effect on carbon and climate cycles. Perhaps the most significant human activity that alters land cover is agriculture. Tropical rainforests are part of an intricate land-atmosphere relationship that can be disturbed by changes like deforestation. Snow and ice cool the planet by reflecting sunlight.
Warmth and moisture create a belt of evergreen broadleaf forests at the equator. These forests absorb carbon dioxide and they also participate in the water cycle by releasing moisture back into the atmosphere. Changes in tropical forests due to deforestation or climate change are being mapped to help to understand how carbon and moisture cycles may be changing.
Credit: NASA
ITEM (3): North America - Land cover mapping is a critical step in tracking greenhouse gases and modeling the carbon cycle. Each land type, represented by different colors, plays a role in the carbon cycle. Northern forests, shown in green, have been identified as a long-term sink for carbon, (absorbing carbon dioxide) and may be especially sensitive to climate change. Large croplands, shown in shades of yellow, represent a massive change of natural landscapes and the carbon budget.
Credit: NASA
ITEM (4): Midwest - Farmland is overtaking the natural grasslands that once covered the American Midwest. As human populations expand, the need for farmland will put more pressure on existing grassland ecosystems. Scientists use land cover maps to monitor the extent and quality of farmland as well as to protect important plants and animal habitats. This animation shows land cover types in the Midwestern United States. Yellow represents farmland, while orange represents grassland.
Credits: NASA
ITEM (5): Northeast - This animation shows land cover types in the northeastern United States. Baltimore and Washington appear to be growing into a single urban corridor, shown in red, replacing the few remaining patches of forest and mixed vegetation that are illustrated in shades of green. Recent evidence that urbanization alters climate and rainfall patterns means mapping metropolitan areas will be important for land use planning and regional weather forecasting.
Credits: NASA
ITEM (6): Pacific Northwest - This animation shows land cover types in the Pacific Northwest. Forests, shown in shades of green, are important ecological and commercial assets to the region. Land cover mapping helps assess the forest size and quality, as well as addressing a variety of natural resource monitoring concerns. While urban sprawl may be the concern near Seattle, on the eastern slopes of the mountains, water availability for dry-land farming across the Columbia River Plateau is key.
Credit: NASA
ITEM (7): Rocky Mountains & The Great Plains - This animation shows land cover types in the Rocky Mountains and western Great Plains regions of the United States. Land-cover mapping at the wildland-urban interface is important for resource management in fire-prone areas. Evergreen forests, shown in dark green, cover the mountain slopes, while lowlands receive less moisture and support grasslands to the east, shown in tan, and open shrublands to the west, in off-white. Land use planners are battling urban sprawl, shown in red, along the Front Range in Colorado (center). Although dominated by Denver, other areas north and south hint at a rapidly expanding urban corridor.
Credits: NASA
ITEM (8): Southeast U.S. - This animation shows land cover types in the southeast United States in different colors. Farmlands, shown in yellow, and forests, represented by shades of green, dominate the region. Mapping land cover along coastal regions will become increasingly important if sea levels continue to rise. In southern Florida, a blue patch of land marks one of the United States' largest remaining wetlands-the Florida Everglades. Its proximity to the Miami urban corridor to the east means land cover and land use must be carefully observed to maintain ecosystem quality.
Credits: NASA
ITEM (9): Southwest U.S. - This animation shows land cover types in the southwestern United States illustrated in different colors. Open shrubland (off white) dominates this semi-arid region, with considerable amounts of barren or sparsely vegetated land (gray) as well. Different land cover types have varied influences on the regional water cycle. In an area where moisture is in short supply, large urban areas (red) such as Los Angeles and agricultural areas (yellow) must carefully plan water use. Accurate mapping of land cover is critical to regional climate models that forecast water resources, as well as for resource management in fire-prone areas, particularly at the wildland-urban interface.
Credit: NASA
ITEM (10): South Central U.S. - This animation shows land cover types in the south-central United States. At right, the Mississippi River Valley looks vastly different than it would have three hundred years ago. Millions of acres of wetlands have been lost as humans have altered the river and its flood plain to create agricultural land, shown in yellow, contributing to periodic, catastrophic floods. Mapping land cover along river systems helps scientists predict where floods are likely to occur and to plan land cover change carefully.
Credit: NASA
ITEM (11): West Coast Zoom - This animation zooms in on land cover types in the western United States. Eastern forests give way to croplands and grasslands in the Great Plains. Farther west, Rocky Mountain evergreen forests contrast with the open shrublands in the Great Basin. In southern California, desert terrain transitions into the Los Angeles metropolitan area. The forested slopes of the Coast and Sierra Nevada Mountains surround the mixture of croplands and oak savannas in the Sacramento and San Joaquin Valleys. In the Pacific Northwest, dense forests circle the Columbia River Plateau.
Credit: NASA
ITEM (12): Land Cover Across South America - This animation shows a map of the various land cover types across South America. Fed by heavy annual rainfall and the vast network of tributaries reaching throughout the Amazon Basin, South America is famous for its evergreen broadleaf forests, shown in dark green, that cover most of northern half of the continent. A long expanse of open shrublands, represented in off-white, runs parallel to the Andes Mountains and reaches southward across the Patagonian highlands. Both open and woody savannas are common throughout southern Brazil, Bolivia, and Paraguay as well as at the north end of the continent in Venezuela. Croplands are widespread across northern Argentina, Uruguay, and much of south central Brazil.
Credits: NASA
ITEM (13): Land Cover Across Asia - This animation shows a map of the various land cover types across Asia. Each color represents a unique land cover classification. The world's largest continent contains a wonderfully colorful mosaic of biomes. North central Russia contains millions of acres of evergreen needle leaf forests, while to the east Russia's landscape is mainly deciduous needle leaf forest. Deciduous forests, mixed forests, and grasslands occupy a vast, wide swath all along Russia's southern border. Asia has many open shrublands along its northernmost reaches and in many patches throughout the continent, such as the Tibetan Plateau. Note that much of the Indian subcontinent as well as much of eastern China has been converted to croplands, shown in yellow, to support its dense populations. The arid, highly reflective lands of the Gobi and Taklimakan Deserts shine like a bright jewel in the center of Asia, while the moist and humid evergreen broadleaf forests, shown in dark green, give southeast Asia and its cluster of Polynesian Islands a dark emerald glow.
Credits: NASA
ITEM (14): Land Cover Across Europe - This movie shows a map of the various land cover types and their extent across Europe. Each color represents a unique land cover classification. Emerald evergreen needleleaf forests crown Northern Europe, spanning from the highlands of Scandinavia across the plains of Northwestern Russia. A belt of deciduous broadleaf and mixed forests bisects the European continent, stretching from Spain in the southwest, across parts of France, Germany, Italy, the Balkans, and well into Russia. The large yellow swaths (croplands) all across the continent indicate agriculture widespread and robust enough to support Europe's burgeoning urban centers. Covered mainly by shrublands and snow and ice, Iceland glitters like a small diamond in the dark waters of the North Atlantic.
Credit: NASA
ITEM (15): Land Cover Across Africa - This animation shows a map of the various land cover types and their extent across Africa. In the north, the African continent is dominated by the vast expanse of the Sahara Desert. Moving southward, the desert gives way to open shrublands and the more heavily vegetated savanna regions. West and central Africa are predominantly evergreen broadleaf forest; however, only a sliver of this land cover is left along the easternmost edge of Madagascar.
Credits: NASA
ITEM (16): Land Cover Across Austraila - This movie shows a map of the various land cover types and their extent across Australia. Each color represents a unique land cover classification. Australia is framed along its east coast by a long, thin sliver of evergreen broadleaf forests that runs from its northernmost tip all the way down to its southern coast, in addition to covering most of the islands of Tasmania and New Zealand to the east. The continent's interior is dominated by open shrublands, which also run through much of New Zealand's South Island. Woody savannas comprise most of Australia's northern and northeastern territories.
Credits: NASA
ITEM (17): Carbon And The Land (G01-023) - During the spring and summer, terrestrial plant life drinks carbon dioxide in from the atmosphere and combining it with water and nutrients from the soil, grows. This is called carbon sequestration. In the fall and winter, significant parts of that spring and summer growth die and decompose, releasing carbon back into system. When a whole tree dies and begins to decompose, all of the carbon sequestered in its body is once again cycled back into the environment. Fire can accelerate this process, sending plumes of carbon-laden aerosols into the atmosphere, as well as leaving carbon-rich ash deposits on the ground for further decomposition and recycling.
Credits: NASA
ITEM (18): TERRA Satellite - Launched December 18, 1999, Terra is the flagship of the Earth Observing System series of satellites and is a central part of NASA's Earth Science Enterprise. The mission of the Earth Science Enterprise is to understand and protect our home planet by developing a scientific understanding of the Earth system and its response to natural and human-induced changes, thus enabling improved prediction capability for climate, weather, and natural hazards.
Credits: NASA
[Color Key Movie]
[West Coast Zoom Movie]
NOTE: The material advertised on this page is a "Video File" and is strictly recommended for the media and production companies. This is NOT a finished production but does contain some narration.
[HOME]
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Earth Science Gallery
2002 EARTH SCIENCE VIDEOTAPES |
||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
Tape Title | Record ID | Date Produced | TRT: | Synopsis |
| GLOBAL LAND COVER | G02-064 | 8/13/02 | 00:19:51 | NASA is providing striking pictures of global land use that is helping experts plan forest fire recovery, manage water resources, and protect the environment. Whether it's a forest, grassland, or city, each land cover type plays an important role in our global environment. Using the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) instrument on NASA's Terra satellite, scientists are creating Land Cover Maps that are helping them understand our changing planet. |
TAPE CONTENTS: |
||||
| ITEM (1): Color Key - The Earth's landscape is changing. Increasing human populations are exerting pressure on our planet's natural landscapes. These pressures have a significant influence on carbon balances between the land and the atmosphere. Carbon is the root of all life on Earth. It's the same stuff that composes lowly coal, and it's the core of proud tree trunks. Mapping land cover types, like forest, grassland, desert, and urban areas is important for stability of global food resources as well as carbon cycle changes that might result from forest loss. This animation shows the different color categories for the Earth's land cover types used in the MODIS Land Cover Map. Forests are shown in shades of green. Less dense vegetation is in shades of yellow and orange. Permanent snow and ice are white. Wetlands are bright blue, and non-ocean water is pale blue. Urban areas are red. Barren and sparsely vegetated areas are gray. Credit: NASA | ||||
| ITEM (2): World View - This animation shows global land cover types in different colors. Each landscape has a different effect on carbon and climate cycles. Perhaps the most significant human activity that alters land cover is agriculture. Tropical rainforests are part of an intricate land-atmosphere relationship that can be disturbed by changes like deforestation. Snow and ice cool the planet by reflecting sunlight. Warmth and moisture create a belt of evergreen broadleaf forests at the equator. These forests absorb carbon dioxide and they also participate in the water cycle by releasing moisture back into the atmosphere. Changes in tropical forests due to deforestation or climate change are being mapped to help to understand how carbon and moisture cycles may be changing. Credit: NASA | ||||
| ITEM (3): North America - Land cover mapping is a critical step in tracking greenhouse gases and modeling the carbon cycle. Each land type, represented by different colors, plays a role in the carbon cycle. Northern forests, shown in green, have been identified as a long-term sink for carbon, (absorbing carbon dioxide) and may be especially sensitive to climate change. Large croplands, shown in shades of yellow, represent a massive change of natural landscapes and the carbon budget. Credit: NASA | ||||
| ITEM (4): Midwest - Farmland is overtaking the natural grasslands that once covered the American Midwest. As human populations expand, the need for farmland will put more pressure on existing grassland ecosystems. Scientists use land cover maps to monitor the extent and quality of farmland as well as to protect important plants and animal habitats. This animation shows land cover types in the Midwestern United States. Yellow represents farmland, while orange represents grassland. Credits: NASA | ||||
| ITEM (5): Northeast - This animation shows land cover types in the northeastern United States. Baltimore and Washington appear to be growing into a single urban corridor, shown in red, replacing the few remaining patches of forest and mixed vegetation that are illustrated in shades of green. Recent evidence that urbanization alters climate and rainfall patterns means mapping metropolitan areas will be important for land use planning and regional weather forecasting. Credits: NASA | ||||
| ITEM (6): Pacific Northwest - This animation shows land cover types in the Pacific Northwest. Forests, shown in shades of green, are important ecological and commercial assets to the region. Land cover mapping helps assess the forest size and quality, as well as addressing a variety of natural resource monitoring concerns. While urban sprawl may be the concern near Seattle, on the eastern slopes of the mountains, water availability for dry-land farming across the Columbia River Plateau is key. Credit: NASA | ||||
| ITEM (7): Rocky Mountains & The Great Plains - This animation shows land cover types in the Rocky Mountains and western Great Plains regions of the United States. Land-cover mapping at the wildland-urban interface is important for resource management in fire-prone areas. Evergreen forests, shown in dark green, cover the mountain slopes, while lowlands receive less moisture and support grasslands to the east, shown in tan, and open shrublands to the west, in off-white. Land use planners are battling urban sprawl, shown in red, along the Front Range in Colorado (center). Although dominated by Denver, other areas north and south hint at a rapidly expanding urban corridor. Credits: NASA | ||||
| ITEM (8): Southeast U.S. - This animation shows land cover types in the southeast United States in different colors. Farmlands, shown in yellow, and forests, represented by shades of green, dominate the region. Mapping land cover along coastal regions will become increasingly important if sea levels continue to rise. In southern Florida, a blue patch of land marks one of the United States' largest remaining wetlands-the Florida Everglades. Its proximity to the Miami urban corridor to the east means land cover and land use must be carefully observed to maintain ecosystem quality. Credits: NASA | ||||
| ITEM (9): Southwest U.S. - This animation shows land cover types in the southwestern United States illustrated in different colors. Open shrubland (off white) dominates this semi-arid region, with considerable amounts of barren or sparsely vegetated land (gray) as well. Different land cover types have varied influences on the regional water cycle. In an area where moisture is in short supply, large urban areas (red) such as Los Angeles and agricultural areas (yellow) must carefully plan water use. Accurate mapping of land cover is critical to regional climate models that forecast water resources, as well as for resource management in fire-prone areas, particularly at the wildland-urban interface. Credit: NASA | ||||
| ITEM (10): South Central U.S. - This animation shows land cover types in the south-central United States. At right, the Mississippi River Valley looks vastly different than it would have three hundred years ago. Millions of acres of wetlands have been lost as humans have altered the river and its flood plain to create agricultural land, shown in yellow, contributing to periodic, catastrophic floods. Mapping land cover along river systems helps scientists predict where floods are likely to occur and to plan land cover change carefully. Credit: NASA | ||||
| ITEM (11): West Coast Zoom - This animation zooms in on land cover types in the western United States. Eastern forests give way to croplands and grasslands in the Great Plains. Farther west, Rocky Mountain evergreen forests contrast with the open shrublands in the Great Basin. In southern California, desert terrain transitions into the Los Angeles metropolitan area. The forested slopes of the Coast and Sierra Nevada Mountains surround the mixture of croplands and oak savannas in the Sacramento and San Joaquin Valleys. In the Pacific Northwest, dense forests circle the Columbia River Plateau. Credit: NASA | ||||
| ITEM (12): Land Cover Across South America - This animation shows a map of the various land cover types across South America. Fed by heavy annual rainfall and the vast network of tributaries reaching throughout the Amazon Basin, South America is famous for its evergreen broadleaf forests, shown in dark green, that cover most of northern half of the continent. A long expanse of open shrublands, represented in off-white, runs parallel to the Andes Mountains and reaches southward across the Patagonian highlands. Both open and woody savannas are common throughout southern Brazil, Bolivia, and Paraguay as well as at the north end of the continent in Venezuela. Croplands are widespread across northern Argentina, Uruguay, and much of south central Brazil. Credits: NASA | ||||
| ITEM (13): Land Cover Across Asia - This animation shows a map of the various land cover types across Asia. Each color represents a unique land cover classification. The world's largest continent contains a wonderfully colorful mosaic of biomes. North central Russia contains millions of acres of evergreen needle leaf forests, while to the east Russia's landscape is mainly deciduous needle leaf forest. Deciduous forests, mixed forests, and grasslands occupy a vast, wide swath all along Russia's southern border. Asia has many open shrublands along its northernmost reaches and in many patches throughout the continent, such as the Tibetan Plateau. Note that much of the Indian subcontinent as well as much of eastern China has been converted to croplands, shown in yellow, to support its dense populations. The arid, highly reflective lands of the Gobi and Taklimakan Deserts shine like a bright jewel in the center of Asia, while the moist and humid evergreen broadleaf forests, shown in dark green, give southeast Asia and its cluster of Polynesian Islands a dark emerald glow. Credits: NASA | ||||
| ITEM (14): Land Cover Across Europe - This movie shows a map of the various land cover types and their extent across Europe. Each color represents a unique land cover classification. Emerald evergreen needleleaf forests crown Northern Europe, spanning from the highlands of Scandinavia across the plains of Northwestern Russia. A belt of deciduous broadleaf and mixed forests bisects the European continent, stretching from Spain in the southwest, across parts of France, Germany, Italy, the Balkans, and well into Russia. The large yellow swaths (croplands) all across the continent indicate agriculture widespread and robust enough to support Europe's burgeoning urban centers. Covered mainly by shrublands and snow and ice, Iceland glitters like a small diamond in the dark waters of the North Atlantic. Credit: NASA | ||||
| ITEM (15): Land Cover Across Africa - This animation shows a map of the various land cover types and their extent across Africa. In the north, the African continent is dominated by the vast expanse of the Sahara Desert. Moving southward, the desert gives way to open shrublands and the more heavily vegetated savanna regions. West and central Africa are predominantly evergreen broadleaf forest; however, only a sliver of this land cover is left along the easternmost edge of Madagascar. Credits: NASA | ||||
| ITEM (16): Land Cover Across Austraila - This movie shows a map of the various land cover types and their extent across Australia. Each color represents a unique land cover classification. Australia is framed along its east coast by a long, thin sliver of evergreen broadleaf forests that runs from its northernmost tip all the way down to its southern coast, in addition to covering most of the islands of Tasmania and New Zealand to the east. The continent's interior is dominated by open shrublands, which also run through much of New Zealand's South Island. Woody savannas comprise most of Australia's northern and northeastern territories. Credits: NASA | ||||
| ITEM (17): Carbon And The Land (G01-023) - During the spring and summer, terrestrial plant life drinks carbon dioxide in from the atmosphere and combining it with water and nutrients from the soil, grows. This is called carbon sequestration. In the fall and winter, significant parts of that spring and summer growth die and decompose, releasing carbon back into system. When a whole tree dies and begins to decompose, all of the carbon sequestered in its body is once again cycled back into the environment. Fire can accelerate this process, sending plumes of carbon-laden aerosols into the atmosphere, as well as leaving carbon-rich ash deposits on the ground for further decomposition and recycling. Credits: NASA | ||||
| ITEM (18): TERRA Satellite - Launched December 18, 1999, Terra is the flagship of the Earth Observing System series of satellites and is a central part of NASA's Earth Science Enterprise. The mission of the Earth Science Enterprise is to understand and protect our home planet by developing a scientific understanding of the Earth system and its response to natural and human-induced changes, thus enabling improved prediction capability for climate, weather, and natural hazards. Credits: NASA | ||||
[Color Key Movie] [West Coast Zoom Movie]
NOTE: The material advertised on this page is a "Video File" and is strictly recommended for the media and production companies. This is NOT a finished production but does contain some narration.
[HOME] [Return to the Earth Science Catalog] [How to order videotapes]