We are literally watching the global garden grow. We now have a regular, consistent, calibrated and near-real-time measure of a major component of the global carbon cycle for the first time. This measure can also be the basis for monitoring the expansion of deserts, the effects of droughts, and any impacts climate change may have on vegetation growth, health, and seasonality."This false-color map represents the Earth's carbon 'metabolism'—the rate at which plants absorbed carbon out of the atmosphere. The map shows the global, annual average of the net productivity of vegetation on land and in the ocean during 2002." It reminds me of another picture of the global garden I linked to a while back: 'the Breathing Earth'.