Time Travel for Eco-Tourists

If you could time travel back 400 years to see the thick, green forests and clear streams of pre-urban New York City, would it change the way you feel about the environment today? Ecologist Eric Sanderson thinks so. In preparation for the 400th anniversary of Henry Hudson's arrival in New York's harbor, he's been putting together a series of computer-generated images of New York as it was four centuries ago, based on old maps and extrapolations from ecological data. He calls it Project Manhatta, and you can see an image from it above, showing Times Square 400 years ago and today. Why would an ecologist want to time travel rather than recycle? More »