[HN Gopher] Average color of each country (using satellite imagery)
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Average color of each country (using satellite imagery)
Author : xk3
Score : 298 points
Date : 2021-12-24 03:51 UTC (19 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (eox.at)
(TXT) w3m dump (eox.at)
| toastal wrote:
| The country of Taiwan, a solid dark shade of green
| noveltyaccount wrote:
| Interesting (but not surprising) how the color matches camouflage
| used in each region.
| hliyan wrote:
| Surprised that much of Europe is green, considering that a lot of
| their forests have been cut down for centuries.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| Grass is also green, lots of agricultural land come up as green
| as well. Actually, Europe is still fairly forested (45%) on
| average, so I'm not sure what other color it could be seen as.
| qinfen wrote:
| Using region in the title is more correct.
| Stevvo wrote:
| A nature lover's tip for Google Maps; old growth primary forest
| appears a far darker shade of green than secondary forest. I've
| found this very useful for finding good hiking close to urban
| areas.
| magicroot75 wrote:
| This is such a great tip. Do you have any others? I personally
| use Strava to find places to walk when I go to new cities. And
| when I'm looking for a neighborhood to stay in a new cities, I
| plot out all moderately expensive restaurants to use as a
| heuristic for safe but not touristy neighborhoods.
| qinfen wrote:
| using region in the title is more correct.
| thriftwy wrote:
| They take those images during high summer, so no white countries.
| phinnaeus wrote:
| What's going on with the "Sentinel 2" text in the subheading on
| the US colours by state graphic?
| enriquto wrote:
| These images don't make any sense to me. This map looks all black
| except for the sahara desert. But the world map before averaging
| looks mostly greenish.
| guerrilla wrote:
| Try on a different screen. What you're seeing as black is
| green; there is no black.
| thathndude wrote:
| Expected to see, essentially, Camo, and wasn't surprised. But I
| was surprised by the emphasis of green versus the yellow or brown
| element.
|
| Was worried that US was going to be "baby poop" yellow/brown.
| gavinmckenzie wrote:
| Very cool, but as a Canadian, I am disappointed that a more
| detailed view of North America as a whole (Canada+US+Mexico)
| wasn't included.
| ahdh8f4hf4h8 wrote:
| Agreed - I think it would be interesting to see it by
| state/province (or even better some kernel smoothing) instead
| of country. Country size is kind of arbitrary, as some
| countries are very large and others are relatively small.
| mkj wrote:
| Time of year for image capture would be worth checking - some
| places vary a lot. Interesting idea anyway.
|
| Reminds me how Google maps changed to a more blue-green (pine?)
| for forests which seems jarring for Australian forests or
| woodlands.
| OccamsRazr wrote:
| Even more fun would be the same graphic produced as an
| animation in the time dimension.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| The brown smudge in Indiana/Ohio is definitely a seasonal
| thing.
| not2b wrote:
| Yes, much of California is green this time of year and yellow-
| brown in the summer.
| eyelidlessness wrote:
| Heck, same is true of Washington (the Evergreen State). I
| think our average color is probably greyish mud?
| yesenadam wrote:
| Average colours of Australian states would be interesting. ..and
| seems about the only part of the world left out so far, besides
| Antarctica.
| gnabgib wrote:
| I guess people only pay attention to what they want to find,
| but Canada and Mexico are missing (=North America with the US)
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29673305. And the Asian
| part of Russia https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29672321
| yesenadam wrote:
| I was talking whole continents. I did notice some other bits
| went missing. "I guess people only pay attention to what they
| want to find" - not sure exactly what you're trying to say
| there, but it didn't feel good.
| aflag wrote:
| It would be interesting to see something similar at a city level,
| it may be even insightful for some cities.
| eruci wrote:
| Interesting how Turkey and Azerbaijan have the same brown color,
| while Georgia and Armenia which are in the same geographical
| location, have a very different deep green color.
| [deleted]
| igitur wrote:
| The red-brown of South Africa (and I guess Argentina and
| Australia too) are basically midway points of their lush green
| regions and dry desert regions.
|
| South Africa is as green as neighbouring Eswatini (formerly
| Swaziland) in the east and south coast and almost as arid as the
| Namib desert in the far north west.
|
| I suppose that's stating the obvious but still interesting. And
| could probably add some comment about how this shows the dangers
| of averages of any heterogeneous data.
| jcmontx wrote:
| You're right, averages in mid-sized and large countries are
| pretty much meaningless
| mastazi wrote:
| One interesting fact is that the arid regions of Australia look
| much more red than most other deserts (which look more yellow,
| look e.g. at the Sahara or the Arabian Peninsula), this is due
| to the high concentration of iron oxide in the soil of many
| inland areas of Australia - in other words our sand basically
| contains a little bit of rust :-D
|
| Edit: a more scientifically correct explanation can be found
| here:
| https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/200...
| igitur wrote:
| Does that mean if you have acid rain, it reduces back to
| iron?
| catlikesshrimp wrote:
| Acid rain oxydizes. Reduction is the oposite chemical
| reaction.
| igitur wrote:
| Ah, thanks. Then I misremembered my high school chemistry
| from 25y ago. I thought rust (the verb) is oxidation and
| that when you add an acid, it would be reduction (to get
| back the iron).
| kazinator wrote:
| "Acid" is from Latin _acidus_ (sour, sharp, tart) by way
| of French.
|
| "Oxygen" is a word invented in 1777 by Antoine Lavoisier,
| from the Greek _oxys_ (sharp, acid): same thing!
|
| Lavoisier also invented "oxide" from ox(ygene) + (ac)ide.
| barrkel wrote:
| Acid / base and oxidize / reduce are mostly orthogonal.
| Acid / base is about moving around protons while oxidize
| / reduce is about moving electrons.
|
| There's a table here: https://www.vedantu.com/question-
| answer/acid-base-reactions-...
| LeifCarrotson wrote:
| I think the mode (after coercion from millions of colors to a
| smaller number of buckets) would be more meaningful than the
| mean.
| Jon_McLoone wrote:
| You can acheive the same result in three lines of Wolfram
| Language...
| https://community.wolfram.com/groups/-/m/t/2431480?p_p_auth=...
| idealmedtech wrote:
| A lot of the complexity of the python code is hidden by the
| Geo* methods you have here; a more representative comparison
| would show how those methods are implemented (eg with the shape
| files).
| [deleted]
| Jon_McLoone wrote:
| But that is the point of the Wolfram Language. If you are
| doing work with computation or data, it should be just built-
| in.
| Jon_McLoone wrote:
| Actually, handling .shp files is also just built-in...
| https://reference.wolfram.com/language/ref/format/SHP.html
| aflag wrote:
| There is a lot of complexity hidden in the R functions as
| well. The reason of using higher level languages with
| comprehensive standard libraries is exactly to abstract these
| things away. So, I think it's fair to say that, for this
| particular problem, wolfram language is better suited.
| Enginerrrd wrote:
| That's actually astonishingly impressive to me.
| robga wrote:
| I've always wondered what the average colour of the web is.
| Probably close to light gray. Maybe Facebook gives it a blue
| tinge. Dark modes have complicated the question.
| OJFord wrote:
| It'd be particularly fun to see that change over time -
| probably very much light grey early on (black text on white or
| near white or patterned whiteish as was popular) but
| darker/more colour as 'webapps' became more prominent and took
| over the whole screen more.
| code123456789 wrote:
| Author forgot the Asian part of Russia, it's included neither to
| Europe, nor to Asia. But it's still on the general map of the
| world. Anyway it would be green.
| kzrdude wrote:
| One can see the same thing as in regular satellite maps: for
| example that Spain is the odd color out in Europe. Much more
| arid, even if it's not a desert.
| SideburnsOfDoom wrote:
| So the "Emerald Isle" of Ireland is basically the same green
| colour as the UK.
| anotherhue wrote:
| Pretty much. Remember how close they are geographically. IANAG
| but the gulf stream is probably the only significant
| difference. Also, they probably should say GB not UK.
|
| https://www.bbc.co.uk/staticarchive/faa977f45fd35ea2f898aaf8...
| moontear wrote:
| Very nice and beautiful! Would print and put on my wall
|
| Is the ,,A" from Average in the poster set apart a bit more
| (letter-spacing) or am I seeing things?
| gpvos wrote:
| That can happen if you have an A and a v next to each other and
| no kerning. Although "from" in the (cursive) line below does
| seem kerned.
| divbzero wrote:
| It would also be cool to see the average color of each body of
| water (ocean, sea, lake...)
| silexia wrote:
| Note that China is gray with pollution. They claim to be reducing
| pollution, but as a dictatorship it's probably just lies.
| obblekk wrote:
| The map design itself is really beautiful. I wonder if there's a
| mobile app that lets me skin google maps in this kind of
| aesthetic?
| Gatsky wrote:
| Surpsied at how red Australia is... although we are trying to
| lighten our complexion by exporting all that iron ore to China.
| jaza wrote:
| It ain't called The Red Centre for nothing.
| tomxor wrote:
| I think it's fitting, feels like the right colour for it's
| uniquely ancient geology.
| doctorhandshake wrote:
| It seems FTA that the 'average' color is found by resizing the
| color information within the bounds in question to 1:1 and then
| using that color to fill the bounds. I'm not sure but that seems
| to be an important algorithmic element of this process that is
| almost completely delegated to a side effect of an image library
| and not really discussed in the context of this write up.
| lgeorget wrote:
| I also routinely make visualizations of geographic and weather
| data (including satellite imagery) as part of my job and it
| doesn't surprise me. Once you've 1) acquired the data you need
| (in this case, we're talking about images of countries without
| clouds and corrected for exposure across the Earth) and 2)
| fixed your data (because it's never in the shape you want, or
| the map projection you need), the core of the algorithm can
| seem pretty trivial sometimes, especially because R and GDAL
| come with a very large set of ready-to-use algorithms (and I'll
| never thank the creators of their respective libs enough for
| that).
| aardvark179 wrote:
| There will be a considerable amount of averaging and re
| sampling before the final resize. Depending on shape of the
| region and how samples outside it are handled you may see
| considerable variation in the results.
|
| What I would be interested in is how much the colour would
| differ if another colour space were used. I wouldn't expect a
| huge change in the imital re projection as adjacent samples are
| likely to be close in whatever colour space is used, but I
| think it might change some of the average colours.
| maxerickson wrote:
| The color is seasonal also. Michigan is green in the summer,
| loses that in the fall, gets whiter in the winter.
| tomsmeding wrote:
| I think that most places on Earth get whiter in winter. ;)
| pieterhg wrote:
| FTA?
| taejo wrote:
| From The Article
| esemor wrote:
| I always knew my home country was dark but, geez...
|
| / Greetings from Sweden.
| shrx wrote:
| I don't see it mentioned in the article, but I suppose one of the
| equal-area projections [0] should be used for calculating the
| average color data.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equal-area_map
| authed wrote:
| I'm surprised that the US is that green with all the desertic
| areas...
| Enginerrrd wrote:
| Not unexpected per se, but I love how closely this tracks with
| various camouflage colors in active use.
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(page generated 2021-12-24 23:02 UTC)