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

ABSTRACT: 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%

SUBMITTER: Grantham HS 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7723057 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature