13 Photographs of Our Planet Before and After Human Intervention

Have you ever noticed that, over time, the places you knew as a child have completely changed? Rivers have become swamps, forests are only found on mountains or, in the place of an ancient desert, a green grove suddenly grows now.

Many changes occur by themselves. But human beings can also be responsible for helping to improve the world. For example, when someone decides to plant a tree, when we sign petitions to restore life to a lake or stop deforestation, or simply if we choose to use a bicycle when using a car is essential.

O awesome.club collected user photographs and satellite photos from different years, obtained from the Images of Change project, which illustrates how people’s actions have progressively changed the face of the world.

Estimate for the future: the strong heat waves will be repeated once every 7 years. This scenario is not new for Earth. Approximately 225 million years ago, the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere increased. In addition, the temperature on Earth has also increased. A methane emission occurred in the Arctic and 97% of living organisms died. The planet took 10 million years to recover from all this damage.

Currently, human action accelerates these processes tenfold: the climate changes faster than nature and human beings are able to adapt to it. But it is man who can delay and even reverse some processes.

Cause: The Three Gorges Dam hydroelectric power plant helped China reduce the volume of greenhouse gas emissions. The increased depth of the Yangtze River has improved transportation conditions, increasing cargo volumes. The dam protects the population from annual floods, which can be devastating.

Estimate for the future: during construction, the natural habitats of a large number of living species were compromised and the land was left without silt sediments, which had been carried by the river during floods, which affected the harvest. The work of the hydroelectric plant resulted in the growth of the number of landslides. In case of an overflow of the dam, the areas where 360 ​​million people live would be flooded, therefore the security of the plant is carried out by the Chinese army.

Cause: Lake Poopó, together with Titicaca, formed a large prehistoric lake, but it dried up, due to the pumping of water to irrigate plantations and the works of mining operations where minerals were extracted for the manufacture of batteries. In 1994, the lake disappeared. It took several years for him to recover, and even then partially.

Estimate for the future: In 2016, the lake dried up and is unlikely to have water again without human intervention. The disappearance of this body of water led to an increase in temperatures in the mountains, a decrease in the amount of rainfall in the region and a change in the biosphere. For example, flamingos and other migratory birds have lost a resting place. And the area with unfavorable conditions for human life continues to expand around the lake.

Cause: the place where the Yellow River flows into has shifted hundreds of kilometers to the south as a result of an artificial flood caused in 1938 by the government of China to fight the Japanese army. The result was the death of nearly 800,000 people.

The river brings in tons of land from the west, and the bay where it flows has changed locations. The sediments are deposited in the coastal areas of the seabed and make the local soil fertile. Therefore, farms are built in the region for the cultivation of marine foods (those dark blue rectangles that can be seen in the image).

Estimate for the future: Due to the constant construction of dams along the river, the number of floods has increased. Approximately 2,000 years ago, this region suffered a catastrophic flood, the result of which affected 9 million people. And this could be repeated today.

In 1889, this was empty land on the Svartisen Glacier, covered by a sheet of ice several meters long. After 120 years, birch trees and a young forest grow on the site. The ice melts and green pastures emerge in its place.

Cause: Melting glaciers are a consequence of global warming. Norway’s water and energy management has been looking at balancing ice masses since early 1974 to control the speed of melting.

Estimate for the future🇧🇷 Norway gets almost 20% of its electricity from bodies of water, which feed on glacier water flows. If the speed of melting increases, the facilities will not have enough energy to transform large volumes of water, causing accidents. Floods will start over large portions of land, the local biosphere and climate will change, and fresh water resources will decrease.

Cause: until the beginning of the 20th century, the Colorado River flowed into the Gulf of California, but the construction of dams, water tanks and channels drained it. Currently, the mouth of the river has lost 95% of its volume, but it still provides water for 40 million people.

In 2014, the US and Mexican governments took the decision to download millions of liters of water to the dam, to fill the riverbed and take the first step towards the return to life in this region. Thus, for the first time in 50 years, it joined the Gulf of California.

Estimate for the future🇧🇷 without human intervention, drainage will continue and, obviously, the river will progressively disappear. Millions of people and farmland will lose water and hundreds of hectares of forest and grasslands will become desert.

Cause: the Topaz Solar Farm plant was built as part of the California project, thanks to which the state expects to receive 33% of its electricity consumption from renewable sources in 2020. Construction began in 2011 and, after two years, the station supplied electricity to the first consumers. Now, 160 thousand homes are supplied by it.

Estimate for the future: such projects reduce the proportion of harmful emissions into the atmosphere and allow for the effective and safe use of uncommon spaces as natural sources of renewable energy. In such projects, the consumer’s personal desire plays an enormous role—in this case, their own homes.

For example, in Germany, individual consumers can sell to the state their electricity, which they obtained thanks to their own windmills and solar panels, and which has not been used.

Cause: the rise in global ocean water temperature has resulted in a mass extinction of corals. In certain areas of the Great Barrier Reef alone, around 90% of them died. When they die, they become attenuated, as the colored algae die inside them. Scientists estimate that all of Earth’s coral reefs will die if humans don’t intervene.

Estimate for the future: will begin with the extinction of the flora and fauna that inhabit this environment.
Certain coral sites are unable to recover without human intervention. The consequence of this loss will affect the quality of the air we breathe: practically 80% of our oxygen is supplied through the ocean. In some countries, there will be a considerable reduction in the fishing and tourism sectors, and the number of devastating storms and hurricanes will increase.

Cause: in the 20th century, the last time snow fell in the Sahara was in February 1979. In 2016, it appeared again. The situation was repeated in 2017 and 2018. Due to global warming, atmospheric pressure in Europe increased and cold air spread southwards, mainly to North Africa

The Atacama Desert is considered one of the driest in the world. But in 1991 and 1997, due to abnormal rainfall, flowers bloomed there. The situation repeated itself in 2010 and 2015.

Estimate for the future: Human action causes the climate to change very quickly. While the moisture that comes to life in the form of snow unexpectedly falls in the Sahara, somewhere in Europe a drought begins, destroying thousands of living organisms, causing forest fires, the decline of crops and leaving human victims.

Cause: farmers in saudi arabia grow fruits and vegetables in the middle of a desert to meet the country’s domestic demand and earn a little export. This is possible thanks to the underground rivers that transformed part of the desert into fertile areas. In the center of each field is an artificial irrigation system, which moves in circles to spray the crops.

Estimate for the future: the region’s arid climate will not change and groundwater reserves will only be sufficient for the next 50 years. That is why it is recommended that farmers move their crops to greenhouses or invest in more profitable projects that do not harm the environment.

Cause: the Yacyretá-Apipé hydroelectric complex is installed on the Paraná River, the second longest river in South America after the Amazon, to supply energy to Argentina and Paraguay. After the construction of the dams, the water level in the river increased and, as a result, 30,000 inhabitants were left without homes and around 800,000 are in risk areas. The flooded territories were home to jaguars, maned wolves, giant anteaters and more than 650 types of birds, in addition to 10,000 types of plants.

The lives of 100 million people and thousands of rare species depend on the river, and the water reservoir protects the underlying land from flooding.

Estimate for the future: there will be a conflict between the countries regarding the payment and the continued exploitation of the dam, interfering in the plans for its expansion. The situation will be…