Putting people in the map: anthropogenic biomes of the world

Humans have fundamentally altered global patterns of biodiversity and ecosystem processes. Surprisingly, existing systems for representing these global patterns, including biome classifications, either ignore humans altogether or simplify human influence into, at most, four categories. Here, we present the first characterization of terrestrial biomes based on global patterns of sustained, direct human interaction with ecosystems. 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 human influence on global ecosystems and moving us toward models and investigations of the terrestrial biosphere that integrate human and ecological systems.

[1]  Kjeld Philip,et al.  Ester Boserup: The Conditions of Agricultural The Economics of Agrarian Change under Population Pressure. George Allen & Unwin Ltd. London 1965. 124 sider. 22/6 sh. , 1965 .

[2]  E. Boserup.  The conditions of agricultural growth: The economics of agrarian change under population pressure , 1966 .

[3]  E. Odum.  The strategy of ecosystem development. , 1969, Science.

[4]  Emilio F. Moran,et al.  Human Adaptability: An Introduction to Ecological Anthropology , 1979 .

[5]  C. Rocha,et al.  Population and technological change: A study of long-term trends , 1981 .

[6]  Population and Technological Change: A Study of Long-Term Trends. , 1982 .

[7]  Vernon W. Ruttan,et al.  Population and Technological Change: A Study of Long-Term Trends by Ester Boserup (review) , 1982 .

[8]  E. Matthews.  Global Vegetation and Land Use: New High-Resolution Data Bases for Climate Studies , 1983 .

[9]  William Cronon,et al.  Changes in the land : Indians, colonists, and the ecology of New England , 1984 .

[10]  V. Smil.  General Energetics: Energy in the Biosphere and Civilization , 1991 .

[11]  S. Levin.  THE PROBLEM OF PATTERN AND SCALE IN ECOLOGY , 1992 .

[12]  S. Levin.  The problem of pattern and scale in ecology , 1992 .

[13]  F. Golley.  A History of the Ecosystem Concept in Ecology: More Than the Sum o f the Parts , 1993 .

[14]  R. Netting.  Smallholders, Householders: Farm Families and the Ecology of Intensive, Sustainable Agriculture , 1994 .

[15]  M. Huston.  Biological Diversity, Soils, and Economics , 1993, Science.

[16]  A. McGuire,et al.  Global climate change and terrestrial net primary production , 1993, Nature.

[17]  L. Slobodkin,et al.  A history of the ecosystem concept in ecology: More than the sum of the parts , 1994 .

[18]  P. Vitousek.  Beyond Global Warming: Ecology and Global Change , 1994 .

[19]  G. Fischer,et al.  Land-use and land-cover change. Science/research plan , 1995 .

[20]  M. L. Cadenasso,et al.  Landscape Ecology: Spatial Heterogeneity in Ecological Systems , 1995, Science.

[21]  I. C. Prentice,et al.  BIOME3: An equilibrium terrestrial biosphere model based on ecophysiological constraints, resource availability, and competition among plant functional types , 1996 .

[22]  C. S. Holling,et al.  Biological Diversity, Ecosystems, and the Human Scale , 1996 .

[23]  Brian K. Roberts,et al.  Landscapes of Settlement: Prehistory to the Present , 1997 .

[24]  W. Parton,et al.  Agricultural intensification and ecosystem properties. , 1997, Science.

[25]  H. Mooney,et al.  Human Domination of Earth’s Ecosystems , 1997, Renewable Energy.

[26]  Gretchen C. Daily,et al.  Developing a Scientific Basis for Managing Earth's Life Support Systems , 1999 .

[27]  J. E. Dobson,et al.  LandScan: A Global Population Database for Estimating Populations at Risk , 2000 .

[28]  A. Farina.  The Cultural Landscape as a Model for the Integration of Ecology and Economics , 2000 .

[29]  N. Grimm,et al.  Integrated Approaches to Long-TermStudies of Urban Ecological Systems , 2000 .

[30]  M. Qadeer.  Ruralopolises : The Spatial Organisation and Residential Land Economy of High-density Rural Regions in South Asia , 2000 .

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

[32]  R. Betts,et al.  Acceleration of global warming due to carbon-cycle feedbacks in a coupled climate model , 2000, Nature.

[33]  D. Western,et al.  Human-modified ecosystems and future evolution , 2001, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.

[34]  J. W. Bruce,et al.  The causes of land-use and land-cover change: moving beyond the myths , 2001 .

[35]  G. Powell,et al.  Terrestrial Ecoregions of the World: A New Map of Life on Earth , 2001 .

[36]  W. Zipperer,et al.  Urban ecological systems: linking terrestrial ecological, physical, and socioeconomic components of metropolitan areas , 2001 .

[37]  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 .

[38]  M. Novacek,et al.  The current biodiversity extinction event: Scenarios for mitigation and recovery , 2001, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.

[39]  E. Dambrine,et al.  Irreversible impact of past land use on forest soils and biodiversity , 2002 .

[40]  Alan H. Strahler,et al.  Global land cover mapping from MODIS: algorithms and early results , 2002 .

[41]  E. Sanderson,et al.  The Human Footprint and the Last of the Wild , 2002 .

[42]  Richard J. Hobbs,et al.  Conservation Where People Live and Work , 2002 .

[43]  D. Tilman,et al.  The Importance of Land-Use Legacies to Ecology and Conservation , 2003 .

[44]  J. D. Pilgrim,et al.  Wilderness and biodiversity conservation , 2003, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.

[45]  Lawrence E. Band,et al.  Down by the riverside: urban riparian ecology , 2003 .

[46]  Jefferson Fox,et al.  People and the environment : approaches for linking household and community surveys to remote sensing and GIS , 2003 .

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

[48]  G. Daily,et al.  Effects of household dynamics on resource consumption and biodiversity , 2003, Nature.

[49]  J. M. Grove,et al.  Integrating Social Science into the Long-Term Ecological Research (LTER) Network: Social Dimensions of Ecological Change and Ecological Dimensions of Social Change , 2004, Ecosystems.

[50]  Amy Luers,et al.  Illustrating the coupled human–environment system for vulnerability analysis: Three case studies , 2003, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.

[51]  C. Gries,et al.  Socioeconomics drive urban plant diversity , 2003, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.

[52]  Graeme Hugo,et al.  New Forms of Urbanization , 2003 .

[53]  E. Kalnay,et al.  Impact of urbanization and land-use change on climate , 2003, Nature.

[54]  L. Gillson,et al.  How "Virgin" Is Virgin Rainforest? , 2004, Science.

[55]  Marc L. Imhoff,et al.  Global patterns in human consumption of net primary production , 2004, Nature.

[56]  David M. Theobald,et al.  Placing exurban land‐use change in a human modification framework , 2004 .

[57]  Rebecca E. Irwin,et al.  Linking economic activities to the distribution of exotic plants. , 2004, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.

[58]  C. Feller,et al.  Spatial carbon, nitrogen and phosphorus budget in a village of the West African savanna—II. Element flows and functioning of a mixed-farming system , 2004 .

[59]  O. Phillips,et al.  Extinction risk from climate change , 2004, Nature.

[60]  Long-Term Ecological Changes in the Densely Populated Rural Landscapes of China , 2004 .

[61]  Mercedes Pascual,et al.  Ecology for a Crowded Planet , 2004, Science.

[62]  David G. Casagrande,et al.  Learning to roll with the punches: adaptive experimentation in human‐dominated systems , 2004 .

[63]  R. DeFries,et al.  Land‐use choices: balancing human needs and ecosystem function , 2004 .

[64]  Navin Ramankutty,et al.  Land cover change over the last three centuries due to human activities: The availability of new global data sets , 2004 .

[65]  Ronald R Rindfuss,et al.  Developing a science of land change: challenges and methodological issues. , 2004, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.

[66]  C. Feller,et al.  Spatial carbon, nitrogen and phosphorus budget of a village territory in the West African savanna : I. Element pools and structure of a mixed-farming system , 2004 .

[67]  Gregory P. Asner,et al.  Ecosystems and land use change , 2004 .

[68]  Christopher B. Field,et al.  The global carbon cycle: integrating humans, climate and the natural world. , 2004 .

[69]  Kenneth M. Johnson,et al.  Rural land-use trends in the conterminous United States, 1950-2000 , 2005 .

[70]  Carsten Thies,et al.  REVIEWS AND SYNTHESES Landscape perspectives on agricultural intensification and biodiversity - ecosystem service management , 2005 .

[71]  D. Capistrano,et al.  Ecosystems and human well-being: multiscale assessments: findings of the Sub-global Assessments Working Group of the Millenium Ecosystem Assessment , 2005 .

[72]  Andrew J. Hansen,et al.  EFFECTS OF EXURBAN DEVELOPMENT ON BIODIVERSITY: PATTERNS, MECHANISMS, AND RESEARCH NEEDS , 2005 .

[73]  M. Huston.  THE THREE PHASES OF LAND‐USE CHANGE: IMPLICATIONS FOR BIODIVERSITY , 2005 .

[74]  W. Steffen,et al.  Human modification of global water vapor flows from the land surface. , 2005, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.

[75]  A. Belward,et al.  GLC2000: a new approach to global land cover mapping from Earth observation data , 2005 .

[76]  B. Entwisle,et al.  Committee on the Human Dimensions of Global Change , 2005 .

[77]  S. Running,et al.  Mapping and Modeling the Biogeochemical Cycling of Turf Grasses in the United States , 2005, Environmental management.

[78]  Eric F. Lambin,et al.  Forest transitions: towards a global understanding of land use change , 2005 .

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

[80]  Maosheng Zhao,et al.  Improvements of the MODIS terrestrial gross and net primary production global data set , 2005 .

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

[82]  J. Y. King,et al.  Effect of consumption choices on fluxes of carbon, nitrogen and phosphorus through households , 2007, Urban Ecosystems.

[83]  S. Carpenter,et al.  Millennium Ecosystem Assessment: Research Needs , 2006, Science.

[84]  D. Richardson,et al.  Novel ecosystems: theoretical and management aspects of the new ecological world order , 2006 .

[85]  Erle C. Ellis,et al.  Measuring long-term ecological changes in densely populated landscapes using current and historical high resolution imagery , 2006 .

[86]  M. L. Cadenasso,et al.  Characterization of Households and its Implications for the Vegetation of Urban Ecosystems , 2006, Ecosystems.

[87]  F. Pozzi,et al.  Mapping global urban and rural population distributions , 2006 .

[88]  A. Troy,et al.  Linking Ecology and Economics for Ecosystem Management , 2006 .

[89]  Christelle Vancutsem,et al.  GLOBCOVER : A 300 M Global Land Cover Product for 2005 using ENVISAT MERIS time series , 2006 .

[90]  Li An,et al.  Interactive effects of natural and human disturbances on vegetation dynamics across landscapes. , 2006, Ecological applications : a publication of the Ecological Society of America.

[91]  F. A. La Sorte,et al.  Compositional similarity among urban floras within and across continents: biogeographical consequences of human‐mediated biotic interchange , 2007 .

[92]  Bruce D. Smith.  The Ultimate Ecosystem Engineers , 2007, Science.

[93]  Navin Ramankutty,et al.  Farming the Planet. Part 1: The 1 Geographic Distribution of Global Agricultural Lands in the Year 2000 , 2007 .

[94]  O. Kweka,et al.  Population, Land Use and Environment: Research directions , 2007 .

[95]  B. Wilkinson,et al.  THE IMPACT OF HUMANS ON CONTINENTAL EROSION AND SEDIMENTATION (Invited) , 2007 .

[96]  D. Lindenmayer,et al.  Landscape modification and habitat fragmentation: a synthesis , 2007 .

[97]  S. Butler,et al.  Farmland Biodiversity and the Footprint of Agriculture , 2007, Science.

[98]  Nancy E. McIntyre,et al.  Urban Ecology as an Interdisciplinary Field: Differences in the use of “Urban” Between the Social and Natural Sciences , 2008 .

[99]  N. Ramankutty,et al.  Farming the planet: 1. Geographic distribution of global agricultural lands in the year 2000 , 2008 .

[100]  Imilla Negra,et al.  Interesting varieties from human nutrition perspective Béatrice Mouillé, U. Ruth Charrondière, Barbara Burlingame, NeBambi Lutaladio Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, Rome, Italy , 2009 .

[101]  Eric F. Lambin,et al.  Land-use and land-cover change : local processes and global impacts , 2010 .