I'm not sure if this has already been discussed or not, so I'm posting it just in case.

I was exploring Google Earth and found a layer which includes NASA's City Lights project. Obviously, it's satellite images taken at night which show the extent of urban sprawl and development.

The idea is that where there are no lights, there is wildlife habitat. A good aid in determining likely BF habitat when used lucidly.

The layer in Google Earth is: Gallery --> NASA --> Earth City Lights.

For example, I live in Odenton, MD and there have been claims of BF sightings in my neighborhood specifically and the Washington-Baltimore area in general.

I had hoped to put them to rest with logic, local surveys, population stats and maps, but to no avail. There are those who refuse to heed reality.

So maybe this will do, a visual demonstration of the population density in this area.

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I think this can be useful for other as well, as a screening tool for sighting claims all over the country. Check out the Pacific North West.

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Also, check out the Michigan Area:

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How COOL, I didn't know Google Earth had night shots. Thanks for saving me the trouble of looking up Michigan.

Very interesting... thanks for posting this!

Like a dummy, I almost forgot about Mangani's excellent work inputting all the sightings into google earth.

When you combine both layers, you get maps like the ones below! very useful.

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Interesting work gigantor. Thanks. It looks like the City Lights mapping does provide a good general proxy for human population density.

I'm inferring from what you've written here that you don't think it is at all likely for Bigfoot, or presumably large wildlife in general, to exist within a densely populated area. I'm not sure it is out of the question. (FWIW Not long ago I had a discussion with another member on more or less the same subject in the Monster Quest thread.)

I agree that larger animals are generally less likely to be present as nearby human population density increases. But I don't think that totally precludes such creatures from being present in, or at least migrating through, sparsely populated forested areas within more densely populated regions. And the City Lights map overlay does not provide sufficient resolution to show narrow forested corridors within metropolitan areas.

I happened to be traveling in your area a few weeks ago. While driving down I-95 I noticed a sign for the Gunpowder River and recalled that I had mapped several reports from that area. What I noted from the highway appeared to be a fairly wide corridor of thick forest cover along the river. So, even though there was dense human population nearby, there still appeared to be sufficient cover to hide a large creature passing through the area, especially one that was primarily nocturnal.

You may be aware that suburban New Jersey residents have been experiencing a growing problem with black bears invading residential neighborhoods. I suspect that if a map of black bear sightings were superimposed with the City Lights map we'd see that it wasn't that uncommon for these large wild creatures to be found within the apparently bright "city light" areas either.

Please understand I don't want to start an argument. I think you do make a reasonable point. However, I don't believe we can be at all certain on this subject. We might assume based on sighting and track reports that these creatures do exist, but with virtually no proven facts about them, I don't think we can presume to know the limits of their range. After all we don't even have a single specimen, even from the areas where reports indicate they are most common. This means that if they do exist they must be far more elusive than any other creature we are familiar with. If so, then it stands to reason that they may differ significantly in other ways, so I don't feel we have any real basis to conclude what their limitations or inclinations might be.