This project was the culmination of a semester-long research project for my Research Methods class with Dietmar Offenhuber at Northeastern in the 2016 spring semester.
The assignment for our research project was to conduct an “object autopsy” – to choose an object, take it apart and see what it’s made of, and then spend a semester looking at where it came from and what impacts it had. I chose to work with soil, which led me into an exploration of global land use and soil depletion, and how the carbon content and fertility of soils affects atmospheric carbon dioxide levels and global warming. The resulting poster shows how different countries use the soil available to them, the changes in soil depletion since 1983, and the population and crowding of different countries on earth. The small multiples graphic was generated using D3 and exported as an svg for use in the final poster.
Further details about the project development can be found in the related blog posts, below.