How has the world changed in the last 30 years? Uzbekistan, Aral Sea

The Olympic construction site connected Sochi and Adler, and from the satellite you can see how the almost wild coast has turned into a modern city.

Russia, Vladivostok and Russky Island

Another massive building recent years: Bridge and roads appear as if from nowhere. Here is the speed.

Uzbekistan, Aral Sea

The Aral Sea, which has dried up, has still retained some of the water from the side of Kazakhstan, but it has fled from Uzbekistan, apparently for good.

UAE, Dubai

In the desert, not only the seas dry up, but entire cities appear. Luxurious and rich Dubai appeared literally out of the blue, as soon as oil was discovered in this place.

Egypt, Hurghada

Something similar happened in Egypt, in tourist Hurghada. On the coast of the Red Sea, a city for recreation arose, and tourists settled in the desert.

The Netherlands, IJsselog

To save Lake Ketelmeer from being polluted by toxic waste, a storage facility has been built in the Netherlands. Now all the dirt is collected on the artificial island of IJsselog, where they are trying to clean the water.

Canada, Alberta

A very short history of the development of the Canadian province of Alberta.

Tanzania, Kilimanjaro

This is the mountain peak of Kilimanjaro, which used to be snow-covered. Now there is still snow, but not at the same scale as before.

Tibetan Plateau

Glaciers are leaving not only Africa. While the Aral Sea dries up, white areas turn blue on the Tibetan plateau.

Thanks to a new project by Google and Time magazine, it is possible to see how the surface of the Earth has changed over the past 30 years. Working with the US Geological Survey (USGS) and NASA, they have brought together images of the planet taken from space over a quarter of a century and compiled an interactive time-lapse map from them.

This card, which write on the Google blog, consists of millions of satellite images and trillions of pixels, can be viewed on the website timelapse . Except expansion history hometown, you can see how the artificial Palm Islands in Dubai were built, how the Columbia Glacier in Alaska retreated, how the forests of the Amazon were cut down, and how Las Vegas grew from 1984 to 2012.

These images were collected as part of an ongoing joint project between the USGS and NASA known as Landsat. Their satellites have been taking photographs of the Earth from space since the 1970s. All received images are sent to Earth and archived on USGS tape drives, which look something like this:

In the final step, Google partnered with the CREATE Lab of Carnegie Mellon University, recipient of the Google Focused Research Award, to transform these annual images of the Earth into a single, viewable HTML5 animation, which is also available at

This card, which write on the Google blog, consists of millions of satellite images and trillions of pixels, can be viewed on the website timelapse . In addition to the history of the expansion of the hometown, you can see how the artificial Palm Islands were built in Dubai, how the Columbia Glacier in Alaska retreated, how the forests of the Amazon were cut down and how Las Vegas grew from 1984 to 2012.

Google began working with the USGS in 2009 to digitize this image archive. Using Google Earth Engine technology, they sifted through 2,068,467 images - a total of 909 terabytes of data - to choose the best quality (no clouds, for example) for every year since 1984 and for every place on Earth. They then assembled them into huge planetary images, 1.78 terapixels each, one for each year.

In the final step, Google partnered with Carnegie Mellon University's CREATE Lab, recipient of the Google Focused Research Award, to transform these annual images of the Earth into a single, viewable HTML5 animation, which is also available at

Google and Time launched a service showing how the planet has changed in 30 years (1984-2012)

This map, which, like the Google blog, consists of millions of satellite images and trillions of pixels, can be viewed on the site. In addition to the history of the expansion of the hometown, you can see how the artificial Palm Islands were built in Dubai, how the Columbia Glacier in Alaska retreated, how the forests of the Amazon were cut down and how Las Vegas grew from 1984 to 2012.

Google began working with the USGS in 2009 to digitize this image archive. Using Google Earth Engine technology, they sifted through 2,068,467 images — a total of 909 terabytes of data — to select the highest quality (no clouds, for example) for every year since 1984 and for every place on Earth. They then assembled them into huge planetary images, 1.78 terapixels each, one for each year.
In the final step, Google partnered with the CREATE Lab of Carnegie Mellon University, recipient of the Google Focused Research Award, to transform these annual images of the Earth into a single, viewable HTML5 animation, which is also available at