EarthPulse

Eight years as a research cartographer for National Geographic magazine supplement maps was valuable preparation for my most daunting assignment: taking the pulse of the planet in less than six months for this new visual report on global trends. Armed with a new master’s degree in environmental sciences and attuned to the most pressing environmental issues, I felt qualified for the job working alongside fellow researcher Kaitlin Yarnall. But despite my experience and green awareness, I soon discovered that it was no small task to package the world into a 119-page newsstand special for more than 15 international editions. For starters, it takes a diehard optimist to tackle some of the world’s gloomiest trends, including accelerated deforestation, pervasive overfishing, rising greenhouse gas emissions and impending species extinctions.

Yet for all Earth’s troubling signs, I found stories of recovery, reason for hope and evidence that the planetary pulse is still beating at a healthy rate. Perhaps the biggest challenge was finding the right scale for telling these stories. For cartographers, scale is usually a technical matter that relates distance on the map to real distances “on the ground.” But for EarthPulse, scale took on a human dimension: Central to its message is the fact that people are part of nature and that their very survival is inextricably linked to healthy ecosystems.

EarthPulse reveals much more than our relationship with nature. Interactive maps and graphics track trends in population, quality of life, food and water, energy use, technology and globalization. But insight into the myriad connections between our lifestyle choices and Earth’s natural systems resonated most with me, inspiring me to take small steps toward becoming a better environmental steward – like living without plastic bags after learning that sea turtles mistake them for jellyfish snacks and are dying from clogged intestines; or joining a local citizen forestry program after exploring benefits of ecosystem services, carbon sequestration and greening cities.

EarthPulse is still hitting newsstands around the world and it was a magical moment when the first copies arrived in Dutch and Hungarian. Earlier disappointment from some tough editorial cuts faded as I leafed through the book and realized that we had indeed accomplished our mission: we had succeeded in bundling the globe into a visually compelling collection of the world’s top trends, a sampling of which we’re pleased to share in this web feature: www.nationalgeographic.com/earthpulse.