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Anthropogenic modification of forests means only 40% of remaining forests have high ecosystem integrity

2020; Nature Portfolio; Volume: 11; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1038/s41467-020-19493-3

2041-1723

Hedley S. Grantham, A. J. Duncan, Tom Evans, Kendall R. Jones, Hawthorne L. Beyer, Richard Schuster, Joe Walston, Justina C. Ray, John G. Robinson, Mark Callow, Tom Clements, Hugo M. Costa, Alfred DeGemmis, Paul R. Elsen, Jamison Ervin, Peter A. Franco, Elizabeth Dow Goldman, S. J. Goetz, Andrew J. Hansen, E. Hofsvang, Patrick Jantz, Stacy D. Jupiter, A Kang, Penny F. Langhammer, William F. Laurance, Susan Lieberman, M. Linkie, Yadvinder Malhi, Sean L. Maxwell, M. Méndez, Russell A. Mittermeier, Nicholas Murray, Hugh P. Possingham, Jeremy Radachowsky, Sassan Saatchi, C. Samper, Jacob Silverman, Aurélie Shapiro, Bernardo B. N. Strassburg, Todd O. Stevens, Emma J. Stokes, Rick S. Taylor, Tim Tear, Robert Tizard, Oscar Venter, Piero Visconti, S. Wang, James E. M. Watson,

Land Use and Ecosystem Services

Many global environmental agendas, including halting biodiversity loss, reversing land degradation, and limiting climate change, depend upon retaining forests with high ecological integrity, yet the scale and degree of forest modification remain poorly quantified and mapped. By integrating data on observed and inferred human pressures and an index of lost connectivity, we generate a globally consistent, continuous index of forest condition as determined by the degree of anthropogenic modification. Globally, only 17.4 million km2 of forest (40.5%) has high landscape-level integrity (mostly found in Canada, Russia, the Amazon, Central Africa, and New Guinea) and only 27% of this area is found in nationally designated protected areas. Of the forest inside protected areas, only 56% has high landscape-level integrity. Ambitious policies that prioritize the retention of forest integrity, especially in the most intact areas, are now urgently needed alongside current efforts aimed at halting deforestation and restoring the integrity of forests globally.