How much land is inhabited by humans

Pianka "Land, they aren't making any more of it" -- Will Rogers Despite claims to the contrary, humans cannot live without food and water. One third of Earth's surface is desert which supports very few people. People can visit deserts but long-term survival in desert regions is very tenuous.

The paper, published June 3 in the prestigious journal Science , has key policy implications for nations negotiating new conservation targets for under the umbrella of the United Nations. This post global biodiversity framework of the Convention on Biological Diversity will come into effect later this year and set the next conservation agenda for participating nations. The paper also says 1. Lead author James R. It is essentially a conservation plan for the planet, and we must implement it quickly.

How much land is inhabited by humans

Using a combination of recent global maps of human influence, researchers were able to calculate the average influence humans are having on ecosystems worldwide. F or as long as humans have existed they have impacted their surrounding environment. As the devastating effects of anthropogenic climate change unravel worldwide, it is hardly surprising that many people favour this view. Whilst it is evident that mankind profoundly impacts the natural environment, being able to quantify this is more challenging. In the study, researchers combined four different global maps of human influence to determine the average human influence for different regions in the world. Interestingly, their findings show that whilst the maps analysed use different methodologies they show similar results for the level of human influence across the globe. Importantly, the level of human influence varies significantly from biome to biome. For these ecosystems, it is a grim illustration that human civilisation has completely altered the natural environment. Ecosystems which still remain relatively untouched by humans provide a number of beneficial services to mankind such as supplying clean water and providing natural flood control as well as being able to protect against some of the impacts of climate change. One example of this is urban wetlands, which are being constructed in order to adapt to extreme weather events and flooding in urban areas, such as in Laos, by controlling water flow and filtration. These ecosystem services are also therefore crucial for improving overall human wellbeing.

Still, you are right about our small impact. You Might Also Like.

This question is an interesting one because, when my friend asked me the other day, I could tell her confidently that not only did science know the answer, science had multiple different ways to quantify that answer, but that I had absolutely no idea what it was. Landcover is one key way that we can measure how much of the terrestrial environment has been covered by humans. The thing is, landcover is something that is changing and our technology to estimate it is improving constantly, so even fairly recent estimates may already be out of date. A meta-analysis in , which included studies of urban landcover using remote sensing technology such as satellite images, found that urban landcover increased by nearly 60, km 2 between and In the year , estimates suggest that globally, urban land covered somewhere between , and 3. The meta-analysis found that the largest rates of increase in urban landcover were seen in India, China and Africa, while North America experienced the largest total change since

Charts Agricultural area over the long-term Agricultural land per capita Agricultural land use Agricultural land use per person Arable land needed to produce a fixed quantity of crops Arable land use per person Area of land needed to meet global vegetable oil demand Change in cereal production, yield, land use and population Contribution to global mean surface temperature rise from agriculture and land use Coverage of wetlands Cropland and pasture per person Cropland area Cropland extent over the long-term Cropland per person over the long-term Dietary land use vs. GDP per capita Extent of extensive agriculture Extent of foraging, hunting and gathering Extent of intensive agriculture Extent of pastoralism FAO projections of arable land Global agricultural land use by major crop type Global cropland is still increasing Global land spared as a result of cereal yield improvements Global land use since 10, BCE Grazing land use over the long-term Has the world passed peak agricultural land? How much cropland has the world spared due to increases in crop yields? How much global land is used as pasture for livestock? Is agricultural land expanding? Change over the prior decade Land area in hectares Land area in square kilometres Land area per crop type Land use Land use for palm oil production Land use for vegetable oil crops Land use of foods per kilocalories Land use over the long-term Land use per grams of protein Land use per kilogram of food product Land use vs. Share of land area used for agriculture Share of land area used for arable agriculture Share of land covered by lakes and rivers Share of land defined as natural habitat Share of land that is degraded Share of land used for permanent meadows and pastures Share of mountain land that is degraded Share of rural land area where the elevation is 5 meters or less Share of world regions with land use present Terrain Ruggedness Index Tractors per square kilometers of arable land.

How much land is inhabited by humans

By Jonathan Lambert. April 15, at am. Lions, hyenas and other top predators still stalk herds of wildebeests over a million strong, preventing them from eating too much vegetation. In turn, such species carry seeds or pollen across the plains, enabling plant reproduction.

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They range from empowering Indigenous Peoples to policies that limit deforestation and to protected areas, depending on the local context. Which to trust? If we include this to our estimate of global human cover — we get a rather more sobering estimate of 19 million km 2. We have only one. Ultimately, the paper concludes that Western Science and Indigenous and local knowledge must be allies in the pursuit of a more sustainable world. To increase the average quality of life, the number of people on Earth must be reduced. The area of Texas is about , mi 2. Subscribe to this blog. Earthquakes can cause tsunamis which can kill hundreds of thousands of people, injuring countless others and destroy decades of human development in a matter of minutes. Human civilisations can still populate a landscape and have low influence over its environment but it is a case of taking a more balanced approach towards conservation efforts. Over half-way to this prediction, where are we now? One example of this is urban wetlands, which are being constructed in order to adapt to extreme weather events and flooding in urban areas, such as in Laos, by controlling water flow and filtration. In The Salt of the Earth a photographer Sebastiao Salgado suggested that half of the world is inhabited. It further used spatially explicit land-use scenarios to quantify the land at risk from human activities by

Using a combination of recent global maps of human influence, researchers were able to calculate the average influence humans are having on ecosystems worldwide. F or as long as humans have existed they have impacted their surrounding environment. As the devastating effects of anthropogenic climate change unravel worldwide, it is hardly surprising that many people favour this view.

Lead author James R. The director was Wim Wenders and the son of Sebastiao Salgado. Even so, could you live on 2. Share this article Each Share makes a difference and potentially gets our article in front of many times the number without shares. Keep freshly informed. Other creatures and plants have a much greater effect on what happens. Let's do the math again, but this time for the entire planet. As I said in my article,. These ecosystem services are also therefore crucial for improving overall human wellbeing. If we include this to our estimate of global human cover — we get a rather more sobering estimate of 19 million km 2. Non-subscribers can email Thomas Worsdell to obtain a copy. In all regions, urban land expanded either faster or equivalent to population growth rates, suggesting our societies are also becoming more expansive. Sorry what I meant to say is that your text was plagiarized by Rithwik. We should convert sea water into sweat water and we should make canals for providing water in all deserts of the world and that area where rocky barren land where we put arable sand in this way our earth can support 40 billion people. This figure gives us an estimate of roughly , km 2 of human-covered land worldwide.