Free For All – Mesmerizing and Just a Bit Creepy

There’s a fine line between the strange and the beautiful, and this month we landed on that line. Markus Reichstein, the director of the Biogeochemical Integration Department at the Max-Planck-Institute for Biogeochemistry in Germany, created an animation depicting the Earth as vegetation takes in carbon dioxide in the summer and releases it in the winter. As the seasons change on each continent, the land masses expand then shrink back, like a morbid beating heart. Areas with more vegetation breath in and out with more alacrity while more arid or sparse environments show less change. It’s mesmerizing to watch.