Global 100m Terrestrial Human Footprint (HFP-100)

Maps depicting the intensity of human pressure on the environment have become a critical tool for spatial planning and management, monitoring the extent of human influence across Earth, and identifying critical remaining intact habitat. Yet, these maps are often years out of date by the time they are available to scientists and policy-makers. Here we provide an updated Human Footprint methodology to run on an annual basis to monitor changing anthropogenic pressures. Software and methods are parameterized to enable regular updates in the future. In addition, we release a 100-meter global dataset for the years 2015–2019 and 2020 based on land use, population, infrastructure, and accessibility data. Results show high levels of agreement in validation against expert-interpreted satellite imagery and improved performance compared to previous iterations of similar datasets. These maps are directly relevant to measuring progress towards national and international targets related to biodiversity conservation and sustainable development.

Methods
This dataset was created by combining data on human pressures across the period 2015 to 2019 and for 2020 to map: 1) Land cover change (built environments, crop lands, and pasture lands), 2) population density, 3) electric infrastructure, 4) roadways, 5) railways, and 6) navigable waterways. Each pressure layer is assigned a score relative to its level of human pressure, then computed into a standardized scale of 0–50 as the sum of all pressure layers. Pressures are not mutually exclusive, rather the co-occurrence of pressures is intended to identify the greatest levels of human impact. The majority of layers cover the complete time period of 2015–2020, however, pressures from pasture, roads, and railways are treated as static in the Human Footprint maps due to limitations in the input datasets.

Scripts used to produce this data are available at: https://gitlab.com/impactobservatory/dwi-humanfootprint

Overall methodology is based on the following: 

--B. A. Williams, O. Venter, J. R. Allan, S. C. Atkinson, J. A. Rehbein, M. Ward, M. Di Marco, H. S. Grantham, J. Ervin, S. J. Goetz, A. J. Hansen, P. Jantz, R. Pillay, S. Rodríguez-Buriticá, C. Supples, A. L. S. Virnig, J. E. M. Watson, Change in Terrestrial Human Footprint Drives Continued Loss of Intact Ecosystems. One Earth. 3, 371–382 (2020).

--E. W. Sanderson, M. Jaiteh, M. A. Levy, K. H. Redford, A. V. Wannebo, G. Woolmer, The Human Footprint and the Last of the Wild: The human footprint is a global map of human influence on the land surface, which suggests that human beings are stewards of nature, whether we like it or not. BioScience. 52, 891–904 (2002).

--O. Venter, E. W. Sanderson, A. Magrach, J. R. Allan, J. Beher, K. R. Jones, H. P. Possingham, W. F. Laurance, P. Wood, B. M. Fekete, M. A. Levy, J. E. M. Watson, Global terrestrial Human Footprint maps for 1993 and 2009. Sci. Data. 3, 160067 (2016).

Please see the following for more detail: 

Gassert F, Venter O, Watson JEM, Brumby SP, Mazzariello JC, Atkinson SC and Hyde S, An operational approach to near real-time global high-resolution mapping of the terrestrial human footprint. Front. Remote Sens. 4:1130896. doi: 10.3389/frsen.2023.1130896 (2023)