BIOSPHERE
a living map of America — every point is real federal data the government keeps and never made beautiful

LIVING LAYERS

how to read it
💧 rivers — brighter = more flow
🌋 quakes — red shallowdeep
🌀 hurricanes — color = category
🔥 drought — mildextreme
🌌 aurora — green = sky-glow odds (live)
🌅 globe — sunlit day side, city lights at night
👆 flip on a layer (top-right) — or press 🎬 tour
building the Earth…
data: USGS live streamflow · USGS/USFWS white-nose occurrence · land: Natural Earth (public domain)
DATA.PUNK · WEEK 3

BIOSPHERE

The government runs thousands of sensors over this country every minute — rivers, wildlife, the spread of disease — and files the readings where almost no one looks. This is a living globe built entirely from that federal data: the planet, as the instruments actually see it.

Spin the Earth. Turn on a layer and watch it come alive — thousands of river gauges reporting their flow right now, live from the USGS, and the white-nose plague crawling across the bat caves of America, winter by winter.

For Natasha — who loves this planet and the small wild things on it, and taught me to look closer. 🌎

the data behind this — all real, all public
💧 Live streamflow — USGS Water Services
🦇 White-nose syndrome — USGS / USFWS
🔥 Drought — U.S. Drought Monitor
🌿 Critical habitat — USFWS ECOS
🌋 Earthquakes — USGS · 🔥 wildfires — NIFC
🌀 Hurricanes — NOAA HURDAT2 · 🌌 aurora — NOAA SWPC
🌎 Basemap — Natural Earth (public domain)