Putting people in the map: anthropogenic biomes of the world

@article{Ellis2008PuttingPI,
  title={Putting people in the map: anthropogenic biomes of the world},
  author={Erle C. Ellis and Navin Ramankutty},
  journal={Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment},
  year={2008},
  volume={6},
  pages={439-447}
}
Humans have fundamentally altered global patterns of biodiversity and ecosystem processes. [] Key Result Eighteen “anthropogenic biomes” were identified through empirical analysis of global population, land use, and land cover. More than 75% of Earth's ice-free land showed evidence of alteration as a result of human residence and land use, with less than a quarter remaining as wildlands, supporting just 11% of terrestrial net primary production. Anthropogenic biomes offer a new way forward by acknowledging…
View via Publisher
esajournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com
1,403 Citations
Highly Influential Citations
71
Background Citations
585
Methods Citations
54
Results Citations
10

1,403 Citations

Incorporating temporality and biophysical vulnerability to quantify the human spatial footprint on ecosystems

Sustaining biodiversity and people in the world's anthropogenic biomes

Land Use and Ecological Change: A 12,000-Year History

  • E. Ellis
  • Environmental Science
    Annual Review of Environment and Resources
  • 2021
Human use of land has been transforming Earth's ecology for millennia. From hunting and foraging to burning the land to farming to industrial agriculture, increasingly intensive human use of land has…

Anthropogenic transformation of the terrestrial biosphere

  • Erle C. Ellis
  • Environmental Science
    Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A: Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences
  • 2011
TLDR
The current global extent, duration, type and intensity of human transformation of ecosystems have already irreversibly altered the terrestrial biosphere at levels sufficient to leave an unambiguous geological record differing substantially from that of the Holocene or any prior epoch.

Change in terrestrial human footprint drives continued loss of intact ecosystems

TLDR
The latest temporally inter-comparable maps of the terrestrial Human Footprint, and assessment of change in human pressure at global, biome, and ecoregional scales show that humanity’s footprint is eroding Earth's last intact ecosystems, and greater efforts are urgently needed to retain them.

Managing the middle: A shift in conservation priorities based on the global human modification gradient

TLDR
A cumulative measure of human modification of terrestrial lands based on modeling the physical extents of 13 anthropogenic stressors and their estimated impacts using spatially explicit global datasets with a median year of 2016 suggests that most of the world is in a state of intermediate modification and moderately modified ecoregions warrant elevated attention.

Global human influence maps reveal clear opportunities in conserving Earth’s remaining intact terrestrial ecosystems

TLDR
It is suggested that about half of Earth's terrestrial surface has relatively low human influence and offers opportunities for proactive conservation actions to retain the last intact ecosystems on the planet.

Mapping and characterizing social-ecological land systems of South America

Humans place strong pressure on land and have modified around 75% of Earth’s terrestrial surface. In this context, ecoregions and biomes, merely defined on the basis of their biophysical features,…

Current Global Land Systems Classifications: Comparison of Methods and Outputs

The anthropogenic impact on the functioning of natural systems and the concept of Anthropocene as a period of the human domination of the Earth has been widely discussed in literature in the past few…

Mapping Change in Human Pressure Globally on Land and within Protected Areas

TLDR
This work developed a spatially and temporally explicit map of global change in human pressure over 2 decades between 1990 and 2010 at a resolution of 10 km(2) and investigated how the THPI within protected areas was correlated to International Union for Conservation of Nature management categories and the human development index (HDI).
...

References

SHOWING 1-10 OF 129 REFERENCES

Terrestrial Ecoregions of the World: A New Map of Life on Earth

TLDR
This article has developed a detailed map of the terrestrial ecoregions of the world that is better suited to identify areas of outstanding biodiversity and representative communities and addresses the disparity in resolution between maps currently available for global conservation planning and the reality of the Earth’s intricate patterns of life.

The Importance of Land-Use Legacies to Ecology and Conservation

Abstract Recognition of the importance of land-use history and its legacies in most ecological systems has been a major factor driving the recent focus on human activity as a legitimate and essential…

Land‐use choices: balancing human needs and ecosystem function

Conversion of land to grow crops, raise animals, obtain timber, and build cities is one of the foundations of human civilization. While land use provides these essential ecosystem goods, it alters a…

Novel ecosystems: theoretical and management aspects of the new ecological world order

We e xplore the issues relevant to those types of ecosystems containing new combinations of species that arise through human action, environmental change, and the impacts of the deliberate and…

Global patterns in human consumption of net primary production

TLDR
The uneven footprint of human consumption and related environmental impacts are revealed, the degree to which human populations depend on net primary production ‘imports’ is indicated and policy options for slowing future growth are suggested.

Global Consequences of Land Use

TLDR
Global croplands, pastures, plantations, and urban areas have expanded in recent decades, accompanied by large increases in energy, water, and fertilizer consumption, along with considerable losses of biodiversity.

Placing exurban land‐use change in a human modification framework

Emerging research on human-modified ecosystems can better inform land-use planning by integrating information from ecological and social science. In particular, low-density land use beyond the urban…

Ecosystems and human well-being: multiscale assessments: findings of the Sub-global Assessments Working Group of the Millenium Ecosystem Assessment

One of the major innovations of the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment is the incorporation of local and regional assessmentsu33 in alluin a global portrait of the planetAEs health. It is the first…

Urban ecological systems: linking terrestrial ecological, physical, and socioeconomic components of metropolitan areas

Ecological studies of terrestrial urban systems have been approached along several kinds of contrasts: ecology in as opposed to ecology of cities; biogeochemical compared to organismal perspectives,…

Beyond Global Warming: Ecology and Global Change

While ecologists involved in management or policy often are advised to learn to deal with uncertainty, there are a number of components of global environmental change of which we are certain–certain…
...