Explore the impact of human activity on Earth's surface in this AGU Sagan Lecture by Professor Mathew Hansen. Delve into land fragmentation, cover change, and biodiversity shifts through remote sensing techniques. Learn about global land cover mapping, Landsat archive utilization, and surface water dynamics. Discover innovative approaches like tree census and pseudo-global analysis. Examine challenges in international protocols, carbon flux measurements, and the potential of high-resolution hyperspectral data. Gain insights into the evolving field of large-area land use change detection and its implications for understanding human influence on our planet.