A new global survey of human development finds people have settled more of the Earth than previously estimated, according to researchers with the German Remote Sensing Data Center.
"The number and proportion of human settlements in many areas in the world has been significantly underestimated so far," said Thomas Esch, a scientist with the Remote Sensing Data Center, which is part of the German Aerospace Center.
The survey, called Global Urban Footprints, involved building a giant database of radar imagery from two German satellites: TerraSAR-X and TanDEM-X. This part of the project produced a map of the planet from some 180,000 radar images. [Human Footprints: Tracking Development From Space]
Esch said earlier estimates had human settlements covering between 1 to 3 percent of Earth's surface. But the new radar data, which can pick up more detail than previous studies, found a greater percentage of developed land. Click foxnews.com to read full article.