Change in terrestrial human footprint drives continued loss of intact ecosystems

Human pressure mapping is important for understanding humanity's role in shaping Earth’s patterns and processes. Our ability to map this influence has evolved, thanks to powerful computing, earth observing satellites, and new bottom-up census and crowd-sourced data. Here, we provide the latest temporally inter-comparable maps of the terrestrial human footprint, and assessment of change in human pressure at global, biome, and ecoregional scales. In 2013, 42% of terrestrial Earth could be considered relatively free of direct anthropogenic disturbance, and 25% could be classed as ‘wilderness’ (the least degraded end of the human footprint spectrum). Between 2000 and 2013, 1.9 million km2 of land relatively free of human disturbance became highly modified. The majority of this occurred within tropical and subtropical grasslands, savannah, and shrubland ecosystems, but the rainforests of Southeast Asia also underwent rapid modification. Our results show that humanity’s footprint is eroding E...

人类压力制图（human pressure mapping）对于理解人类在塑造地球格局与过程中的作用至关重要。得益于高性能计算、地球观测卫星以及新型自下而上的普查与众包数据，我们绘制这类人类影响图谱的能力已得到显著提升。本数据集提供最新的、时间上可相互比较的陆地人类足迹（terrestrial human footprint）图谱，并针对全球、生物群系及生态区域尺度的人类压力变化开展评估。2013年，全球42%的陆地可被视为基本未受直接人为干扰的区域，另有25%可归类为“荒野”（即人类足迹梯度上退化程度最低的一端）。2000年至2013年间，共有190万平方千米的原本基本无人类干扰的土地发生了高度改造。其中大部分变化发生在热带与亚热带草原、稀树草原及灌丛生态系统中，但东南亚的热带雨林也经历了快速的生态改造。本研究结果表明，人类足迹正在不断侵蚀……