A Rising Ocean Floods All Economies

The aphorism "a rising tide lifts all boats" refers to the prospect of everyone benefiting from a prosperous economy. If you believe that concept, then you ought to accept that a rising ocean floods all economies.

I recently came across an interesting application of Google Earth mapping applied to the issue of global climate disruption. Most people are aware of the predictions of sea level rise expected this century as a result to melting of polar ice caps. The organization Step It Up 2007 has created an impact video of the effect of sea level rise on New York City – specifically Manhattan Island. Expected flooding there would sink much of lower Manhattan beneath the New York harbor.

You can view the YouTube video now.

One effort of the Step It Up 2007 organization is the Sea Of People project that injects the human element into the sometimes boring statistics of climate education.

We can expect to see similar mapping and community education projects applied to all sorts of environmental impacts: change of growing patterns as the great corn desert plant zone moves northward and other ecosystems disappear to replaced by others, depletion of aquifers, and of course, more visualizations of the disappearance of islands and coastlines all around the world. Stay tuned. It should be a very interesting century.

• EPA Sea Level Rise Map


• UN Observed Climate Trends

BTW, I’d like to talk to any Illinoisans working on interesting applications of mapping systems that improve our knowledge of natural resources or other Illinois spatial data.