Enquiry: How has human land use transformed Earth’s surface over time, and how can we visualize this change in a way that makes its scale and impact more understandable? This project explores a shift from natural to agricultural land through icon-based patterns that represent real-world land area.
At the beginning of Unit 3, I came across two impactful datasets that show how human activity has transformed Earth’s land over thousands of years. Both datasets focused on land use—how it has shifted from natural landscapes to human-made uses, especially for agriculture. Inspired by this, I aimed to combine the information into a single visual map that could clearly show the changes between two key moments: 8000 BCE and 2018 AD.
Chart on the left shows how Earth’s land cover has shifted over the past 10,000 years, with forests and grassland shrinking as agricultural land expanded. Chart on the right breaks down how global land is used, showing that a large share of habitable land is dedicated to agriculture, especially for livestock.
The data covers six different time periods, but I decided to focus on just two: 8000 BCE and 2018 AD. My initial idea was to make two separate zines, so I worked in a page format. I started by imagining the cover pages for each date.
For 8000 BCE, I designed a simple blue Earth. For 2018, I added a mesh over the globe to represent how we’ve wrapped nearly half of the Earth’s habitable land in agriculture.
Next, I created individual icons for each natural land type in the data—oceans, grasslands, forests, lakes and rivers, deserts, and glaciers. I used parts of a circle to design these icons, referencing the shape of the Earth.
Next, I designed icons for human land use categories: urban areas, cropland, and livestock grazing. These icons were made using repeatable line patterns that reminded me of zebra crossings. The stripes became a metaphor for human impact and footprint—an easily recognizable visual cue that contrasted with the more organic forms of the natural icons.
I created a set of individual pages showing each symbol alongside an inspiration image. Then I arranged these icons into large-scale patterns that together represent the full surface of the Earth in each time frame.
On the left side of the final visual, I placed the 8000 BCE layout—mostly filled with natural icons. On the right side, the 2018 version showed a drastic shift, with nearly half of the pattern covered in striped human land use, particularly for livestock.
These pages were initially meant to be the poster pages of the zine. However, by the end of the process, I was unsure whether the zine format was still the best fit. I was satisfied with the large visual map for the poster pages, but the interior icon pages didn’t feel purposeful on their own.
As the project evolved, I also began experimenting with 3D printing, which had become a hobby of mine very recently. I printed the pattern pieces and began layering them in different ways to create new compositions. This added a tactile, interactive dimension to the visual exploration, opening up new possibilities for how the work could be presented or developed further.
References
[1] Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) (n.d.) Land, Inputs and Sustainability: Land Use. Available at: http://www.fao.org/faostat/en/#data/RL (Accessed: [20 February 2025])
[2] OECD (2002) EEA Glossary. Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. Available at: http://glossary.eea.europa.eu/EEAGlossary
[3] Roser, M. & Ritchie, H. (n.d.) Global Land for Agriculture. Our World in Data. Available at: https://ourworldindata.org/global-land-for-agriculture (Accessed: 23 February 2025).
[4] Roser, M. & Ritchie, H. (n.d.) Global Forest Transition. Our World in Data. Available at: https://ourworldindata.org/global-forest-transition (Accessed: 23 February 2025).
[5] Hawken, P. (2021) Regeneration: Ending the Climate Crisis in One Generation. New York: Penguin Books, p. 191.***