Humans have modified the landscape of Planet Earth in many ways. This modification is nothing new—it began as the earliest humans began burning of local grasslands to encourage new growth, tilling the soil for the first agricultural experiments, and building small dams to ensure a water source. Yet today’s changes are more frequent and also larger in area, from the construction of cities, reservoirs, and tunnels, to widespread land use change through the conversion of the natural land cover to cropland, grazing pastures, mining sites, and other uses.

The sandy peninsula of Cape Cod, Massachusetts juts into the Atlantic Ocean with its characteristic crook and twirl in both images: “Balloon View–Nantucket to Boston” made in 1885, and a Landsat 8 satellite image made 129 years later in 2014. Aspirations to rise above the Earth and to record the Earth’s surface from there are a long-standing theme of human culture.