Temporally inter-comparable maps of terrestrial wilderness and the Last of the Wild

Wilderness areas, defined as areas free of industrial scale activities and other human pressures which result in significant biophysical disturbance, are important for biodiversity conservation and sustaining the key ecological processes underpinning planetary life-support systems. Despite their importance, wilderness areas are being rapidly eroded in extent and fragmented. Here we present the most up-to-date temporally inter-comparable maps of global terrestrial wilderness areas, which are essential for monitoring changes in their extent, and for proactively planning conservation interventions to ensure their preservation. Using maps of human pressure on the natural environment for 1993 and 2009, we identified wilderness as all ‘pressure free’ lands with a contiguous area >10,000 km2. These places are likely operating in a natural state and represent the most intact habitats globally. We then created a regionally representative map of wilderness following the well-established ‘Last of the Wild’ methodology; which identifies the 10% area with the lowest human pressure within each of Earth’s 60 biogeographic realms, and identifies the ten largest contiguous areas, along with all contiguous areas >10,000 km2. Design Type(s) observation design • time series design Measurement Type(s) ecoregion Technology Type(s) digital curation Factor Type(s) temporal_interval • geographic location • biome Sample Characteristic(s) Afrotropic Region • Australasian Region • Indomalayan Region • Nearctic Region • Neotropical Region • Oceania Region • Palearctic Region • flooded grassland biome • mangrove biome • mediterranean forest biome • montane grassland biome • montane savanna biome • subtropical broadleaf forest biome • subtropical grassland biome • subtropical savanna biome • temperate grassland biome • temperate savanna biome • temperate shrubland biome • tropical broadleaf forest biome • tropical grassland biome • tropical savanna biome • xeric shrubland biome • temperate mixed forest biome • subtropical coniferous forest biome • temperate coniferous forest biome • tropical coniferous forest biome • subpolar coniferous forest biome • tundra biome Design Type(s) observation design • time series design Measurement Type(s) ecoregion Technology Type(s) digital curation Factor Type(s) temporal_interval • geographic location • biome Sample Characteristic(s) Afrotropic Region • Australasian Region • Indomalayan Region • Nearctic Region • Neotropical Region • Oceania Region • Palearctic Region • flooded grassland biome • mangrove biome • mediterranean forest biome • montane grassland biome • montane savanna biome • subtropical broadleaf forest biome • subtropical grassland biome • subtropical savanna biome • temperate grassland biome • temperate savanna biome • temperate shrubland biome • tropical broadleaf forest biome • tropical grassland biome • tropical savanna biome • xeric shrubland biome • temperate mixed forest biome • subtropical coniferous forest biome • temperate coniferous forest biome • tropical coniferous forest biome • subpolar coniferous forest biome • tundra biome Machine-accessible metadata file describing the reported data (ISA-Tab format)

• Publication year

  2017

• Venue

  Scientific Data

• Publication date

  2017-12-12

• Fields of study

  Geography, Medicine, Environmental Science

• Identifiers
  DOI 10.1038/sdata.2017.187PMID 29231923PMCID 5726312
• External record

  Open on Semantic Scholar

• Source metadata

  Semantic Scholar, PubMed

• No claims are published for this paper.

• No concepts are published for this paper.

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