There are many causes of biodiversity loss, including deforestation, agricultural development, urbanization, pollution, and climate change. Understanding the ways in which humans are interacting with the environment and how the resulting changes impact Earth’s systems is important to preserving biodiversity.

NASA’s Earth-observing satellites reveal the impacts humans have on ecosystems by collecting data on factors such as nighttime lights, forest cover, and air quality. Many of these datasets cover the entire globe. NASA also curates socioeconomic surveys that aid in understanding humanity’s impact on the Earth’s surface and the ways people’s lives and health have been shaped by changes to the environment. 

Our data products useful to the study of human-influenced ecosystems include crop extent maps, urban greenhouse gas measurements, and land cover surveys. These data enable important studies into how humans shape the Earth and how we can better care for our planet.