Mother Earth as Art Brochure

OUR BEAUTIFUL EARTH Our beautiful Earth, the only home we have, provides us with food, air, water and land. Nature is an integral part of our wellbeing. We need to embrace the environment and nurture it as our own self.

MUSEUM HOURS Monday: Closed Tuesday–Saturday: 10 a.m.–4:30 p.m.

Extended Hours: Thursday until 8 p.m.

Sunday: 1–4 p.m.

Mother Earth as Art—its ageold phraseology embodying the femininity of nature—celebrates the 50th anniversary of Earth Day in 2020 by exploring an intersection of art and science through unique photographic manipulations of our planet’s surface.

Environmental satellites have captured an aesthetic beauty of

1 Faults - When landmasses collide, rock layers can break. Geologists call these breaks “faults.” Rock layers are offset in this image in western China, making the faults remarkably clear. The different colors indicate rocks that formed at different times and in different environments.

Earth, its geological diversity

2 Capillaries - Marking part

and humankind’s impact. From

of the boundary between Colombia and Venezuela, the Meta River resembles an artery among capillaries within the human body. Those capillary-like features actually depict dense tree cover along the numerous streams that flow among rich tropical grassland.

orbital vantage points, regional and global perspectives reveal color-filled artistic views ranging from Cubism to “sloppy paint.” These images of our home in the universe, “mother earth,” offer points of reflection and wonder on her origins, her continual evolution and our interactions with her.

The museum is pleased to collaborate on the exhibition with the Department of Geosciences, in particular Dr. Chandana Mitra and her graduate

3 Land Of Terror - No

Water. No vegetation. No oases. Known as the “Land of Terror,” the Tanezrouft Basin in Algeria is one of the most desolate parts of the Sahara Desert. Sand dunes, which appear in yellow, streak down the left side of the image, and sandstone formations carved by relentless wind erosion make concentric loops, much like the grain seen in a piece of wood.

4 Nature’s Patterns -

The biologically complex conditions of mangroves are shown in dark green along the fingers of the Ord River in Australia. Yellow, orange, and blue represent the impressive flow patterns of sediment and nutrients in this tropical estuary. The bright spot at the lower left is an area of mudflats, which is home to saltwater crocodiles.

students, Megha Shrestha, Elijah 901 SOUTH COLLEGE STREET AUBURN, AL ABAMA

Johnson, and Eshita Akter Eva. Appreciation as well is extended to AlabamaView, the state chapter of the nationwide AmericaView consortium for remote sensing education, research,

@JCSMAUBURN JCSM.AUBURN.EDU

and geospatial applications, and its Board Chair and original Earth as Art curator, Brent Yantis, MLA, University of Louisiana at Lafayette.

E XPLORE . E XPE RIEN C E. EN G AG E.

FUTURE OF OUR BEAUTIFUL EARTH Are we seeing and feeling changes around us? Are glaciers really melting? Will coral reefs recover soon? These pressing questions should lead us to think that our beautiful Earth, the only home we know of, needs care and love. Our pursuit of happiness should be in sync with the givings of nature. We need to nurture and restore the beauty of the flowing rivers and glaciers, the vibrant shades of life, the picturesque landscape, all of which we can and our future generations can cherish.

5 Folded Earth - The main feature here is the folding of the Earth into layers in Margaret, Alabama. The folded pattern looks like streaks of watercolor on canvas.

6 Valley Farms - The main

features here are the fault lines that crack up the Earth’s surface in Hamilton County, Tennessee. It is hard to hide the raw beauty of the Earth.

7 Shoal Complex - The main

feature here, near Eleuthera Island in the Bahamas, is the Schooner Cays shoal complex. The tidal sand ridges, parabolic bars, and intervening channels explode in a blue rhythm. The Bahamas have the third most extensive coral reef in the world.

9 Deep Blue Cubism - A bit of blue cubism in southern Uzbekistan highlights the intensive irrigation that is common along rivers that flow into the Aral Sea. However, so much water is used for irrigation that very little actually reaches the Aral Sea. The perplexing variety of blue and green shades are farm fields with actively growing vegetation among the scattered residential zones.

HUMAN FOOTPRINT ON OUR BEAUTIFUL EARTH In need of food, air and land, we humans have modified the face of Earth. The beauty still remains; only the colors have changed patterns. Agriculture, irrigation, urbanization, all have left an irreversible and irreparable footprint, giving rise to these checkered and geometric patterns on Earth.

13 Slessor Glacier in

Antarctica flows between the angular promontory Parry Point on the top left of the image and the Shackleton Range on the lower right. The purple highlights are exposed ice. Strong winds blow away the snow cover and expose lines that indicate the glacier flow direction. Rock outcrops next to the glacier also exhibit some of this bare ice.

18 Embracing the Sun - The

19 Earth Selfie - The

14 Himalayas - Soaring,

snow-capped peaks and ridges of the eastern Himalaya Mountains create an irregular white-on-red patchwork between major rivers in southwestern China.

The Himalayas are made up of three parallel mountain ranges that together extend more than 2,900 kilometers.

Once a vast carpet of healthy vegetation, the Amazon rainforest is changing rapidly.

This image of Bolivia shows dramatic deforestation in the Amazon Basin. Loggers have cut long paths into the forest, while ranchers have cleared large blocks for their herds.

Fanning out from these clearcut areas are settlements built in radial arrangements of fields and farms. Healthy vegetation appears bright red in this image.

15 Great Barrier Reef -

8 What appears to be

smatterings of paint on a wall represents an amalgam of human-made and natural features in southwestern Iran. The dark red shape in the center of the image is Shadegan Pond, which is the northern part of the larger Shadegan Wetlands.

Red areas depict actively growing vegetation, and the rectangular shapes in the upper left reveal irrigated farmland.

17 Bolivian Deforestation -

on Florida’s Coast – The red tide, produced by the harmful algal blooms, are returning more often now, engulfing the beautiful creatures of the waters.

10 Tessera Mosaic - The

Tietê River snakes across this tessera mosaic of multicolored shapes near Ibitinga, Brazil. Fields of sugarcane, peanuts, and corn vary in their stages of development. Lavender, purple, and bright blue indicate actively growing crops. Light yellow or white indicate little or no vegetation growth. The splotches of dark mustard yellow are urban areas.

16 The Sea in Bloom - Algae

11 Garden City, Kansas -

Center pivot irrigation systems created these circular patterns in cropland near Garden City, Kansas.

The red circles indicate irrigated crops of healthy vegetation. The light-colored circles represent harvested crops.

12 “Quilted Riverbanks”,

Konza Prairie, Kansas Transforming the prairie grasslands to irrigated land, ready to produce crops to be consumed far and wide, gives rise to this beautiful pattern resembling a colorful quilt.

What might be mistaken for dinosaur bones being unearthed at a paleontological dig are some of the individual reefs that make up the Great Barrier Reef, the world’s largest tropical coral reef system.

The reef stretches more than 2,000 kilometers (1,240 miles) along the coast of Queensland, Australia.

It supports astoundingly complex and diverse communities of marine life and is the largest structure on the planet built by living organisms.

beautiful picture shows the solar panels covering the land of Butler, Georgia where people are preparing to embrace the future of clean, renewable energy.

tendency to recognize human faces in things that are not human is common. Can you see the eye, nose, and mouth in this satellite image of Morocco? The face captured in this “Earth Selfie” appears to be quietly watching over the waters just off its coast. The city of Agadir is underneath the chin, and the irrigated farms of the Souss Valley appear in red.