Global 100m Terrestrial Human Footprint (HFP-100) v1.2

This repository contains the global results for the Human Footprint 100m product for 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020 and 2021. The Human Footprint (HFP) is used to monitor changing anthropogenic pressures on a yearly cadence based on land cover change, population density, nighttime lights, roads, railways, and navigable rivers.

This version 1.2 includes the years 2017-2021 based on land cover from the Esri/Impact Observatory 10m Annual Land Use Land Cover (9-class) dataset. Version 1 of this dataset covering the years 2015-2020 can be found at https://datadryad.org/stash/dataset/doi:10.5061/dryad.ttdz08m1f.

This dataset was created by combining data on human pressures across the period 2017-2021 to map: 1) Land cover change (built environments, crop lands, and pasture lands), 2) population density, 3) electric infrastructure, 4) roadways, 5) railways, and 6) navigable waterways. Each pressure layer is assigned a score relative to its level of human pressure, then computed into a standardized scale of 0-50 as the sum of all pressure layers. Pressures are not mutually exclusive, rather the co-occurrence of pressures is intended to identify the greatest levels of human impact. The majority of layers cover the complete time period of 2017-2021, however pressures from pasture, roads, and railways are treated as static due to limitations in the input datasets.

Overall methodology is based on the following:

• B. A. Williams, O. Venter, J. R. Allan, S. C. Atkinson, J. A. Rehbein, M. Ward, M. Di Marco, H. S. Grantham, J. Ervin, S. J. Goetz, A. J. Hansen, P. Jantz, R. Pillay, S. Rodríguez-Buriticá, C. Supples, A. L. S. Virnig, J. E. M. Watson, Change in Terrestrial Human Footprint Drives Continued Loss of Intact Ecosystems. One Earth. 3, 371–382 (2020).
• E. W. Sanderson, M. Jaiteh, M. A. Levy, K. H. Redford, A. V. Wannebo, G. Woolmer, The Human Footprint and the Last of the Wild: The human footprint is a global map of human influence on the land surface, which suggests that human beings are stewards of nature, whether we like it or not. BioScience. 52, 891–904 (2002).
• O. Venter, E. W. Sanderson, A. Magrach, J. R. Allan, J. Beher, K. R. Jones, H. P. Possingham, W. F. Laurance, P. Wood, B. M. Fekete, M. A. Levy, J. E. M. Watson, Global terrestrial Human Footprint maps for 1993 and 2009. Sci. Data. 3, 160067 (2016).

Please see the following publication for more information: Gassert F., Venter O., Watson J.E.M., Brumby S.P., Mazzariello J.C., Atkinson S.C. and Hyde S., An Operational Approach to Near Real Time Global High Resolution Mapping of the Terrestrial Human Footprint. Front. Remote Sens. 4:1130896 doi: 10.3389/frsen.2023.1130896 (2023). https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/frsen.2023.1130896/full

Data information

HFP scores range from 0 to 50, with 0 representing virtually no human pressure and 50 representing severe human pressure on the environment. The data available here is multiplied by 1000 and converted to uint16 data type to reduce file sizes such that a value of 50000 corresponds to a score of 50. No data regions are coded as 65535.

Code/Software

Data was produced using open source Python scripts and processed in the Microsoft Planetary Computer infrastructure. Scripts used to produce this data are available at https://gitlab.com/impactobservatory/dwi-humanfootprint.

Suggested Citation

F. Gassert, O. Venter, J. E.M. Watson, S.P. Brumby, J.C. Mazzariello, S.C. Atkinson, S. Hyde. 2023: "Global 100m Terrestrial Human Footprint (HFP-100) v1.2"

License

Creative Commons CC-BY-4.0

Disclosure

Funding provided by Microsoft.