The World as Satellites See It

The science

Most world maps are abstractions – lines, borders, symbols. This one is closer to a photograph. It is built from land cover data derived from Landsat and Chinese HJ-1 satellite imagery, classifying the Earth's surface into its actual physical cover: grass, forest, bare ground, water, cities and cropland, at 30-meter resolution.

Land cover mapping is one of the workhorses of environmental science, used to track deforestation, urban growth and agricultural change over time. This print is a single frame from that ongoing record – a snapshot of the surface as satellites see it.

How we turned it into a print

We kept the colors close to how the world actually appears from orbit, so the map reads almost like the Earth seen from space: green forests, tan deserts, blue water. It is the most naturalistic map we make – a momentary portrait of a surface that is changing faster every year.

The print

From our Spectrum collection, The World as It Appears is printed on premium paper in 70x50 cm and 100x70 cm. Data source: Chen et al., global land cover from Landsat and HJ-1 satellite data.