Wildlife Conservation Society University of Northern British Columbia University of Queensland Green Fire Science
Sixteen years of change in the global human footprint

The web maps below allow you to compare the human footprint in 1993 and in 2009 and see what's changed.

  • Compare the Human Footprint in 1993 and in 2009
  • Explore the change in Human Footprint (2009 - 1993)
  • View/download selected country maps (pdf):

The human footprint map measures the cumulative impact of direct pressures on nature from human activities. It includes eight inputs:

  1. the extent of built environments,
  2. crop land,
  3. pasture land,
  4. human population density,
  5. night-time lights,
  6. railways,
  7. roads, and
  8. navigable waterways.

Details about the work are provided in the following papers:

Oscar Venter, Eric W. Sanderson, Ainhoa Magrach, James R. Allan, Jutta Beher, Kendall R. Jones, Hugh P. Possingham, William F. Laurance, Peter Wood, Balázs M. Fekete, Marc A. Levy & James E. M. Watson, 2016. Sixteen years of change in the global terrestrial human footprint and implications for biodiversity conservation. Nature Communications 7:12558. DOI:10.1038/ncomms12558

Venter et al. 2016. Global terrestrial Human Footprint maps for 1993 and 2009. Sci. Data 3:160067. DOI: 10.1038/sdata.2016.67

Full data can be downloaded from Data Dryad: http://dx.doi.org/10.5061/dryad.052q5.

Human Footprint summary data can be downloaded here:

More Information

Press release: Analysis: Global Human Footprint Slows

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