Map Monday: Will Global Warming Drown Your Hometown?
You may recently have read about climate change and North Carolina for all the wrong reasons, entailing laws designed to forbid the mentioning of the term "climate change" as well as outright banning measurements of sea-level rise.
You may recently have read about climate change and North Carolina for all the wrong reasons, entailing laws designed to forbid the mentioning of the term “climate change” as well as outright banning measurements of sea-level rise. At the heart of this drama, is elevation mapping technology applied to climate change to better understand future changes to the environment.
In the case of North Carolina – its coast and the Outer Banks in particular – the state appears to be at particular risk, but what about other US cities? Well, several studies have attempted to detail exactly what will happen to different cities across the US, turning Alaska and Detroit into the most popular destinations by 2050, and underlining Miami’s vulnerability as the most “at-risk city in America”.
In this week’s Map Monday, I’d like to share a new mapping technology which helps answer the question: will global warming drown your hometown? Actually, it’s not a new technology, it’s a “repurposed” technology if you will, namely Lidar, or Light Detection and Ranging, which gives you detail on elevation mapping by location.
The views expressed are those of the author(s) and are not necessarily those of Scientific American.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR(S)
Tali Trigg is an energy analyst, technology policy advisor and writer. His work includes research and analysis on energy and transportation, with an emphasis on the role of cities in shaping transport energy demand and mobility solutions. His blog covers the wide range of mobility and energy, with deep-dives into numbers and maps, but is keen to cover anything transport-related and under-reported. Opinions are his own.
