These time-lapse GIFs of Earth are terrifying, courtesy of NASA
Simran Khosla, GlobalPost
Brace yourself
In an effort to show us our impact on the planet, NASA's Earth Observatory has a series of time-lapsed images from around the world. Each one shows the significant impact of humans have on the environment around them.
The Aral Sea is practically gone.
On the border between Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan is the Aral Sea. Once well supplied with water by the region's two major rivers, the sea lost its river sources in the 1960s when the Soviet Union undertook a massive water diversion project to irrigate its desert.
What was once the fourth largest basin in the world has basically dried up at this point. The black lines on the time-lapse below represent the Aral Sea's original borders from 1960.
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We are STILL cutting down the Amazon at alarming rates.
Rondônia, Brazil was once home to 51.4 million acres of gorgeous, life-giving rainforest. In the last three decades, though, humans have gutted it.
According to NASA: "Clearing and degradation of the state's forests have been rapid: 4,200 square kilometers cleared by 1978; 30,000 by 1988; and 53,300 by 1998. By 2003, an estimated 67,764 square kilometers of rainforest — an area larger than the state of West Virginia — had been cleared."
CONTINUE, MORE TIME-LAPSE PHOTOS TO VIEW!......