The HYDE 3.1 spatially explicit database of human‐induced global land‐use change over the past 12,000 years

Aim  This paper presents a tool for long-term global change studies; it is an update of the History Database of the Global Environment (HYDE) with estimates of some of the underlying demographic and agricultural driving factors. Methods  Historical population, cropland and pasture statistics are combined with satellite information and specific allocation algorithms (which change over time) to create spatially explicit maps, which are fully consistent on a 5′ longitude/latitude grid resolution, and cover the period 10,000 bc to ad 2000. Results  Cropland occupied roughly less than 1% of the global ice-free land area for a long time until ad 1000, similar to the area used for pasture. In the centuries that followed, the share of global cropland increased to 2% in ad 1700 (c. 3 million km2) and 11% in ad 2000 (15 million km2), while the share of pasture area grew from 2% in ad 1700 to 24% in ad 2000 (34 million km2) These profound land-use changes have had, and will continue to have, quite considerable consequences for global biogeochemical cycles, and subsequently global climate change. Main conclusions  Some researchers suggest that humans have shifted from living in the Holocene (emergence of agriculture) into the Anthropocene (humans capable of changing the Earth's atmosphere) since the start of the Industrial Revolution. But in the light of the sheer size and magnitude of some historical land-use changes (e.g. as result of the depopulation of Europe due to the Black Death in the 14th century and the aftermath of the colonization of the Americas in the 16th century) we believe that this point might have occurred earlier in time. While there are still many uncertainties and gaps in our knowledge about the importance of land use (change) in the global biogeochemical cycle, we hope that this database can help global (climate) change modellers to close parts of this gap.

[1]  Q. Ge,et al.  Land use changes and their relations with carbon cycles over the past 300 a in China , 2008 .

[2]  Christopher B. Field,et al.  Combining satellite data and biogeochemical models to estimate global effects of human‐induced land cover change on carbon emissions and primary productivity , 1999 .

[3]  P. deMenocal.  Cultural Responses to Climate Change During the Late Holocene , 2001, Science.

[4]  H. K-S,et al.  Population change and economic development in Mainland China since 1400. , 1977 .

[5]  Corinne Le Quéré,et al.  Trends in the sources and sinks of carbon dioxide , 2009 .

[6]  A. Bouwman,et al.  Mapping contemporary global cropland and grassland distributions on a 5 × 5 minute resolution , 2007 .

[7]  G. Esser.  Chapter 31 – Osnabrück Biosphere Model: structure, construction, results , 1991 .

[8]  G. Woodwell,et al.  Changes in the Carbon Content of Terrestrial Biota and Soils between 1860 and 1980: A Net Release of CO"2 to the Atmosphere , 1983 .

[9]  W. D. Borrie,et al.  A Concise History of World Population. , 1994 .

[10]  Kees Klein Goldewijk,et al.  Biogeophysical effects of land use on climate : Model simulations of radiative forcing and large-scale temperature change , 2007 .

[11]  G. Fischer,et al.  Simulating effects of land use changes on carbon fluxes: past contributions to atmospheric CO2 increases and future commitments due to losses of terrestrial sink capacity , 2008 .

[12]  R. Engelman,et al.  Human population in the biodiversity hotspots , 2000, Nature.

[13]  Limin Yang,et al.  Development of a global land cover characteristics database and IGBP DISCover from 1 km AVHRR data , 2000 .

[14]  P. Ciais,et al.  Consistent Land- and Atmosphere-Based U.S. Carbon Sink Estimates , 2001, Science.

[15]  Hans-Rudolf Bork,et al.  Quantification of past soil erosion and land use / land cover changes in Germany , 2003 .

[16]  W. Cramer,et al.  A global biome model based on plant physiology and dominance, soil properties and climate , 1992 .

[17]  H. Belshaw,et al.  The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations , 1947, International Organization.

[18]  R. Houghton.  The annual net flux of carbon to the atmosphere from changes in land use 1850–1990* , 1999 .

[19]  Wallace S. Broecker,et al.  The Holocene CO2 rise: Anthropogenic or natural? , 2006 .

[20]  J. Ypersele,et al.  Transient climate simulation forced by natural and anthropogenic climate forcings , 2002 .

[21]  B. Rumes,et al.  Climate-Driven Ecosystem Succession in the Sahara: The Past 6000 Years , 2008, Science.

[22]  N. Ramankutty,et al.  Characterizing patterns of global land use: An analysis of global croplands data , 1998 .

[23]  W. Ruddiman,et al.  The Anthropogenic Greenhouse Era Began Thousands of Years Ago , 2003 .

[24]  Pablo A. Marquet,et al.  From the Holocene to the Anthropocene: A historical framework for land cover change in southwestern South America in the past 15,000 years , 2010 .

[25]  D. Bird,et al.  Effects of syn-pandemic fire reduction and reforestation in the tropical Americas on atmospheric CO2 during European conquest , 2008 .

[26]  Andrés Etter,et al.  Patterns of Landscape Transformation in Colombia, with Emphasis in the Andean Region , 2000 .

[27]  Kees Klein Goldewijk,et al.  Long-term dynamic modeling of global population and built-up area in a spatially explicit way: HYDE 3.1 , 2010 .

[28]  Elena Shevliakova,et al.  Modeled Impact of Anthropogenic Land Cover Change on Climate , 2007 .

[29]  Thomas Raddatz,et al.  A reconstruction of global agricultural areas and land cover for the last millennium , 2008 .

[30]  R. Houghton.  Carbon Flux to the Atmosphere from Land-Use Changes: 1850 to 1990 , 2001 .

[31]  Michael Williams,et al.  Dark ages and dark areas: global deforestation in the deep past , 2000 .

[32]  Bas Eickhout,et al.  The importance of three centuries of land-use change for the global and regional terrestrial carbon cycle , 2009 .

[33]  S. Malyshev,et al.  The underpinnings of land‐use history: three centuries of global gridded land‐use transitions, wood‐harvest activity, and resulting secondary lands , 2006 .

[34]  I. C. Prentice,et al.  Carbon balance of the terrestrial biosphere in the Twentieth Century: Analyses of CO2, climate and land use effects with four process‐based ecosystem models , 2001 .

[35]  S. Carpenter,et al.  Global Consequences of Land Use , 2005, Science.

[36]  Dirk Verschuren,et al.  Rainfall and drought in equatorial east Africa during the past 1,100 years , 2000, Nature.

[37]  R. Houghton.  Revised estimates of the annual net flux of carbon to the atmosphere from changes in land use and land management 1850 – 2000 , 2003 .

[38]  K. K. Goldewijk.  Three Centuries of Global Population Growth: A Spatial Referenced Population (Density) Database for 1700–2000 , 2005 .

[39]  E. Brown,et al.  History and timing of human impact on Lake Victoria, East Africa , 2002, Proceedings of the Royal Society of London. Series B: Biological Sciences.

[40]  F. Woodward,et al.  Global response of terrestrial ecosystem structure and function to CO2 and climate change: results from six dynamic global vegetation models , 2001 .

[41]  John E. Kutzbach,et al.  Climate model tests of the anthropogenic influence on greenhouse-induced climate change: the role of early human agriculture, industrialization, and vegetation feedbacks , 2008 .

[42]  A. Mannion.  The earth as transformed by human action , 1991 .

[43]  J. F. Richards,et al.  Historical analysis of changes in land use and carbon stock of vegetation in south and southeast Asia , 1991 .

[44]  Kevin J. Gaston,et al.  Biodiversity and extinction: macroecological patterns and people , 2006 .

[45]  M. Araújo,et al.  Scale effects and human impact on the elevational species richness gradients , 2008, Nature.

[46]  Joseph A. Tainter,et al.  The way the wind blows : climate, history, and human action , 2000 .

[47]  E. Lambin,et al.  Long‐term land‐cover changes in the Belgian Ardennes (1775–1929): model‐based reconstruction vs. historical maps , 2002 .

[48]  J. Kaplan,et al.  The prehistoric and preindustrial deforestation of Europe , 2009 .

[49]  N. Ramankutty,et al.  Estimating historical changes in global land cover: Croplands from 1700 to 1992 , 1999 .

[50]  K. K. Goldewijk.  Estimating global land use change over the past 300 years: The HYDE Database , 2001 .

[51]  A. Maddison,et al.  The World economy :a millennial perspective , 2001 .

[52]  S. Running,et al.  Simulated impacts of historical land cover changes on global climate in northern winter , 2000 .

[53]  D. Nogues‐Bravo,et al.  Predicting the past distribution of species climatic niches. , 2009 .

[54]  Paul G. Risser,et al.  The Human Impact on the Natural Environment , 2018 .

[55]  Sean Oughton,et al.  Impact of Hall effect on energy decay in magnetohydrodynamic turbulence , 2003 .

[56]  F. Joos,et al.  Climate and human influences on global biomass burning over the past two millennia , 2008 .

[57]  J. L. Sanchez,et al.  Journal De Physique. IV : JP , 1997 .

[58]  Erle C. Ellis,et al.  Anthropogenic transformation of the biomes, 1700 to 2000 , 2010 .

[59]  H. Possingham,et al.  Historical Patterns and Drivers of Landscape Change in Colombia Since 1500: A Regionalized Spatial Approach , 2008 .

[60]  H. Damon Matthews,et al.  Radiative forcing of climate by historical land cover change , 2003 .

[61]  K. Gaston,et al.  Habitat conversion and global avian biodiversity loss , 2003, Proceedings of the Royal Society of London. Series B: Biological Sciences.

[62]  Andrei P. Sokolov,et al.  Climate Dynamics (2006) DOI 10.1007/s00382-005-0092-6 , 2005 .

[63]  Hans-Rudolf Bork,et al.  Landschaftsentwicklung in Mitteleuropa : Wirkungen des Menschen auf Landschaften , 1998 .

[64]  Nathan P. Gillett,et al.  Natural and anthropogenic climate change: incorporating historical land cover change, vegetation dynamics and the global carbon cycle , 2004 .

[65]  Hao Shen,et al.  Molecular ways to nanoscale particles and films , 2002 .

[66]  G. Meehl,et al.  The Importance of Land-Cover Change in Simulating Future Climates , 2005, Science.

[67]  T. Patrick Culbert.  The classic Maya collapse , 1974 .