( CNN ) -- On the last day of October 2011 , the U.N. says the world population will hit seven billion people -- an increase of one billion since 1999 . To show some of the impacts of this vast human upheaval , Canadian anthropologist Felix Pharand has created a series of visualizations mapping the presence of technology onto a selection of satellite images showing the Earth from space . U.N. : World can 'thrive ' as population reaches 7 billion . Using data from a range of sources , including the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency and the World Meteorological Organization , the images depict a sprawl of air traffic routes , the underwater cables that carry the internet , road and rail networks , pipelines , shipping lanes and electricity transmission lines . `` These images are illustrations of how far we have come at transforming our home planet , '' said Pharand , who is founder-director of Globaia -- an environmental education organization based in Quebec . `` It shows a human-dominated planet where wilderness areas are shrinking and where the habitats of other species are decreasing in size , '' he added . According to the U.N. Population Fund , it took the whole of human history until the early 19th century to reach a population of one billion people , and it was not until 1927 that the figure doubled to two billion . Now , the U.N. calculates that the global population will reach nine billion by 2050 and , by the end of the century , it says there could be up to 16 billion people on the planet . `` We humans have become a major force of operation on the biosphere . My goal is to foster global awareness of these issues by changing people 's worldviews , '' said Pharand . `` The strength of these images is , I think , the fact that they are wordless and global , and their overall meaning can be grasped instantly by almost anyone without having to describe them with labels and legend . '' Eoghan Macguire contributed to this report .
A new series of computer visualizations show impact of human technology on earth . Score: 6 U.N. global population to reach seven billion by end of October 2011 .