Latest Human Footprint Map is an Essential Tool in the Fight to Combat Man-made Climate Change.

A new global human footprint map has shown that human impacts on nature are leading to a loss of 6.5 million hectares of wilderness per year, among other findings on the human impact on nature. The map is available at 100m resolution for 2015–2021. Human footprint maps are a critical tool for spatial planning and the management of habitat risks, protected areas, species loss, and more. They’re also an essential tool to measure progress towards global and national biodiversity conservation and sustainable development goals. As the ink dries on the commitments made at COP28, the ‘nature’ COP, this map’s publication will help turn those pledges into action.

Policy makers, companies, NGOs and scientists rely on human footprint maps to measure humanity’s impact on nature, and as a barometer of nature’s health. But updates to these maps are sporadic. This research provides the most credible, current and detailed human footprint map available, with a methodology and technological approach that supports the study being rerun on an annual basis.

This research is the result of a collaboration between Vizzuality, Impact Observatory, and researchers at the the University of Northern British Columbia, the University of Queensland, and the UNDP. It builds on an established methodology for mapping humanity’s influence on nature, started by researchers at the Wildlife Conservation Society in 2002, and previous scientific studies, with the aim of providing more accurate and relevant data for ecosystem and biodiversity preservation.

“Even in the most industrialized parts of the world we live alongside nature. By connecting larger wildlife communities, small natural areas can improve the health and resilience of the ecosystems we depend upon.”

— Francis Gassert, Strategy & Impact, Vizzuality

What is a Human Footprint Map?

Why do our surroundings change? What large-scale impact does human activity have on the natural world? These are the questions that human footprint maps are designed to answer.

Loss of biodiversity, changes in animal habitat patterns, increases in emissions, and so on, are often linked to human activities in a given area. Human footprint maps track macro-scale trends in these activities and their influence on natural systems.

The study measures human footprint against the following criteria:

• Land Cover Change: Land cover change pressures are mapped using a combination of three layers: built environments, crop lands, and pasture lands.
• Population Density: Population density is scored under the assumption that the pressures people induce on their local natural systems increase with increasing population density, and saturate at a level of 1,000 people per square kilometer.
• Nighttime Lights: The VIIRS Annual Night Time Lights version 2 (VNL v2) dataset is used to map electric infrastructure.
• Roads: As one of humanity’s most prolific linear infrastructures, roads are an important driver of habitat conversion.
• Railways: By modifying a linear swath of habitat, railways exert direct pressure where they are constructed.
• Navigable Waterways: Coastlines and navigable rivers act as conduits for people to access nature.

The impacts of pollution, invasive species, and direct and indirect impacts of anthropogenic climate change are not measured due to limited available data.

A human footprint map aggregates the above criteria to calculate their impact, areas on a map are assigned a human footprint score that’s presented visually. The higher the concentration in a given area, the higher the score.

Human footprint scores have a range of 0–50. A score of zero means an area is largely untouched by modern, industrialized civilization. These areas are termed “wilderness”. A score of 1–4 signifies low disturbance. Anything above a 4 means an area has been highly modified as a result of human activity, resulting in a larger human footprint.

Key Findings

Global human pressure on natural ecosystems is expanding rapidly, with an average loss of 6.5 million hectares of wilderness per year from 2015–2019. Humanity’s footprint is eroding Earth’s last intact ecosystems; retaining Earth’s wilderness requires urgent action.

Between 2015 and 2019, a global average increase of human footprint by 0.10 was observed. This translates to a net change of 24 million hectares from “wilderness” to “low disturbance” and 33 million hectares from “low disturbance” to “highly modified.” Tropical forest, mangrove, and temperate broadleaf forest biomes have been the most affected.

There’s good news as well too. In many regions, this study finds more natural areas than previous studies. The higher resolution data helps better identify smaller green corridors and natural areas that provide critical connectivity between habitats and stopping points for migratory species.

Helping Countries and Governments Build a Better World for Nature

If human activity is driving negative impacts on nature, then human activity can also drive positive ones. By tracking negative human impacts on the environment, stakeholders can better track the conservation and loss of natural areas around the world. As such, human footprint maps have been used to support more sustainable spatial planning and land use management, to support the identification of species’ with an extinction risk, and to identify critical areas of remaining habitat.

“The world is changing rapidly. Every day, cities develop, crops are grown, forests are managed, and yet unsustainable resource usage and natural disasters put the whole system at risk. This greatly impacts society’s choices about the infrastructure, food systems, water supplies, and natural resources that we all depend on.”

— Steve Brumby, CEO of Impact Observatory

Human footprint maps are also useful for government agencies and other researchers and scientists. Environmental agencies may use the data to better decide which areas to designate as protected. There is also the potential for corporations to use it to evaluate their impacts on nature when they’re engaged in at-risk areas. They can also prioritize agricultural production in areas that are already human influenced instead of areas that are wilderness or primary forest. The human footprint map will be available as open access to support researchers, policymakers and companies in taking positive action on nature.

The study updates existing human footprint maps with higher resolution data, validated with satellite imaging data. This allows for the mapping of smaller natural areas, such as green corridors, rivers, riparian buffers, and even small parks or wetlands that provide critical habitat and stopping points for birds.

This new data will also enable more accurate measurement of progress towards the objectives of the Convention of Biological Diversity, United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Sustainable Development Goal of Life on Land.

Thank you to the authors of the research paper, “An Operational Approach to Near Real-Time Global High-Resolution Mapping of the Terrestrial Human Footprint”, led by our colleague Francis Gassert and co-authored by Oscar Venter, James Watson, Steven Brumby, Joe Mazzariello, Scott Atkinson, and Sam Hyde.

Link to the open-access data and map.