Australia's terrestrial industrial footprint and ecological intactness

These datasets represent a Human Industrial Footprint (HIF) index map and an Ecological Intactness Index (EII) map for Australia circa 2020-2024. The datasets are distributed in raster format (.tif) and have a spatial resolution of 100 m, mapped on an Australian Albers Equal Area projection (EPSG:3577). 

The HIF was created by incorporating 16 nationally relevant pressure layers, also part of the dataset. The pressures used to compute the HIF were 1) intensive land uses, 2) buildings, 3) mining and quarrying, 4) human population density, 5) croplands, 6) pasturelands, 7) forestry plantations, 8) reservoirs and large dams, 9) farm dams, 10) roads, 11) railways, 12) energy transmission lines, 13) oil pipelines, 14) gas pipelines, 15) hiking trails, and 16)  navigable waterways. Each pressure layer was assigned a relative score between 0 and 10 to make them comparable. The scored (scaled) pressure layers were then summed to obtain the final HIF map.

The HIF was used to derive the Ecological Intactness Index (EII). The EII is calculated using the HIF, with the intactness index value for each cell parameterised to: a) be proportional to habitat area when there is no habitat fragmentation; b) decline mono-tonically as fragmentation increases, and be sensitive to both the number of nearby patches and the separation between patches, and (c) to be proportional to habitat quality for a given total area of habitat and degree of fragmentation.

In the pressure layer folder, native and modified pasturelands are merged in the "pastures" pressure layer and paved and unpaved roads are in the "roads" layer.

Acknowledgements

This research was funded by The Wilderness Society.

Contact

Further queries regarding these datasets can be directed to Ruben Venegas ([e-mail]) and James Watson ([e-mail]).