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What’s to Come Next?

Figuring out the kinds of conservation efforts that are most effective is the most important next step for research in the field, Halpern says. New studies may be able to pinpoint areas that are doing well and areas that are not, but it’s not able to provide any information about the management techniques that are affecting these areas.

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New Research Techniques

The researchers used global-scale data to map the cumulative impacts of human activities between 2008 and 2013, pinpointing which areas are under increasing stress, which areas are experiencing a decrease and which human activities are having the biggest impacts in which areas. They found that nearly two-thirds of the ocean in experiencing an increase in these man-made impacts and climate change is the worst of all, driving the majority of the changes the researchers observed.

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Harm Over the Years

While we have a good idea of which activities are causing harm to the ocean, scientists have been less clear on which ones are the most damaging and which regions of the ocean are getting the worst of it. Now, New reasearch has allowed scientists to map the impacts of 19 different types of human activity that have harmed the ocean over a span of five years.

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Ocean Suffrage

The world’s oceans have suffered a lot at the hands of humans  ask any marine conservationist. Unsustainable fishing, pollution and the effects of climate change are just a few of the issues that worry scientists and environmentalists.

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The world's oceans have suffered a lot at the hands of humans - ask any marine conservationist. Unsustainable fishing, pollution and the effects of climate change are just a few of the issues that worry scientists and environmentalists.

While we have a good idea of which activities are causing harm to the ocean, scientists have been less clear on which ones are the most damaging and which regions of the ocean are getting the worst of it. Now, new research has allowed scientists to map the impacts of 19 different types of human activity that have harmed the ocean over a span of five years. The study was published Tuesday in the journal Nature Communications.

The researchers used global-scale data to map the cumulative impacts of human activitiesbetween 2008 and 2013, pinpointing which areas are under increasing stress, which areas are experiencing a decrease and which human activities are having the biggest impacts in which areas. They found that nearly two-thirds of the ocean in experiencing an increase in these man-made impacts - and climate change is the worst of all, driving the majority of the changes the researchers observed.

The effects of this climate change include temperature anomalies in the water, ocean acidification and an increase in ultraviolet radiation. These factors can create conditions unfavorable to some marine organisms, changing the composition of ecosystems, driving animals to different parts of the ocean and even causing some species to begin dying off. Ocean acidification, for instance, is notorious for interfering with the ability of certain organisms, such as coral, to build the shells they use to protect their bodies.

And while the study reveals that some types of activities, such as overfishing, tend to cluster in specific regions, the effects of climate change appear to be "truly global," says lead author Benjamin Halpern, a professor of environmental science and management at the University of California, Santa Barbara. "Any global or regional scale efforts to improve ocean condition really need to address climate change," he says.

Within the two-thirds of the ocean experiencing an increase in stress, the researchers found that five percent of the world's oceans are heavily harmed by human activity and likely require immediate attention. Five percent may not sound like much, but Halpern says these areas are among the parts of the oceans most important to humans. "Many of them are in coastal areas where a lot of people live, and so they're places that we care about a lot and places that we don't want to see disappear because they're providing us so many goods and benefits from the oceans," he says. Some of the most highly impacted coastal regions the study identified included the Faroe Islands, the eastern Caribbean, Cape Verde and the Azore Islands.

Mapping out the parts of the oceans experiencing heavy or increasing stress can help policymakers better allocate resources for conservation, targeting the areas that are in the most need. And these maps can also help world leaders figure out the scale of the effort required to combat a problem. For example, local efforts may be enough to target specific regions that are heavily affected by overfishing. But combating the effects of climate change, which are widespread throughout the Earth's oceans now, will likely require an international effort, Halpern says.

The study also identifies regions experiencing a decrease in stress from human activity. Admittedly, these regions comprise a much smaller percentage of the world's oceans - just 13 percent. But pinpointing these areas can provide equally valuable information, according to Halpern. "In some cases they do likely indicate success stories where management action has helped improve the condition of the ocean," he says, meaning policymakers can look to these areas for information on management techniques that have proved effective.

In fact, figuring out the kinds of conservation efforts that are most effective is the most important next step for research in the field, Halpern says. Tuesday's study may be able to pinpoint areas that are doing well and areas that are not, but it's not able to provide any information about the management techniques that are affecting these areas.

The study does present a fairly dire view of the health of the world's oceans - but Halpern stresses that there are some positive takeaways, too. "Although things are generally getting worse across the planet, there are places that are getting better," he says. "And hopefully we can learn from those, see what we're doing well, and apply those lessons to other parts of the planet."

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Human impact on the oceans is growing - and climate change is the biggest culprit

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The world's oceans have suffered a lot at the hands of humans - ask any marine conservationist. Unsustainable fishing, pollution and the effects of climate change are just a few of the issues that worry scientists and environmentalists. While we have a good idea of which activities are causing harm to the ocean, scientists have been [...]

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Air Pollution

The majority of air pollution is the result of human activities. For example, increased fossil fuel combustion from motor vehicles, industrial factories and power plants all pump large quantities of air pollutants, such as carbon monoxide, ozone and nitrous oxides, into the atmosphere.

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Water Pollution

One of the biggest impacts humans have on aquatic systems is excess nutrient inputs. Nutrients, like nitrogen and phosphorus, are essential to the health and survival of aquatic plants and animals. However, humans introduce large quantities of nutrients, primarily through overuse of fertilizers.

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Direct Impacts

Some of these are the direct result of human activities, whereas others are secondary effects that are part of a series of actions and reactions.

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How Humans Impact the Earth

Humans impact the environment in several ways. Common effects include decreased water quality, increased pollution and greenhouse gas emissions, depletion of natural resources and contribution to global climate change.

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Effect of Human Activities on the Environment

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Effect of Human Activities on the Environment. Humans impact the environment in several…

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Factors of Human Impact

Agriculture, Fishing, Agricultural land loss, soil erosion, Meat production, And Palm oil all are because of our human impact

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New Technbolgy Helps Humans Measure Ecosystems

As nanotechnology is an emerging field, there is great debate regarding to what extent industrial and commercial use of nanomaterial will affect organisms and ecosystems

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Human Appilication

Human applications on various fields may affect the enviorment which leads to pollution. An increase in population makes excessive demands on natural resources, and increases the demand on agriculture.

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Enviorment Impact

Enviormental impact caused by the application of technology are often perceived as unavoidable for several reasons. Nanotechnology's environmental impact can be split into two aspects: the potential for Nano technological innovations to help improve the environment, and the possibly novel type of pollution that Nano technological materials might cause if released into the environment.

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Human impact on the environment or anthropogenic impact on the environment includes changes to biophysical environments and ecosystems, biodiversity, and natural resources caused directly or indirectly by humans, including global warming, environmental degradation such as ocean acidification and mass extinction.

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Human Footprint

The study, published Tuesday in the journal Nature Communications, is based on analysis of satellite imagery and other data from 1993 and 2009. Researchers sought to rigorously map our impact on the global environment called the human footprint and how it has changed.

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New Satellite Technology

Students are using various kinds of satellite data to analyze eight different categories of human impacts, including the extent of built environments, cropland and pasture land, population density, nighttime lights, roads, railways, and navigable waterways.

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New Reasearch

The new study is part of a growing research trend that capitalizes on improvements in satellite technology to map and monitor human activities such as
Deformation and oil drilling.

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Impact Humans Have

Human Impact on the environment has grown substantially in the last 16 years—so much so that a new study concludes three-quarters of Earth’s land surface is under pressure from human activity.

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The impact humans have on the environment has grown substantially in the last 16 years-so much so that a new study concludes three-quarters of Earth's land surface is under pressure from human activity. But the research also shows that humanity's footprint on the planet hasn't grown as fast as the overall population, and that may give conservationists cause for hope.

The study, published Tuesday in the journal Nature Communications, is based on analysis of satellite imagery and other data from 1993 and 2009. Researchers sought to rigorously map our impact on the global environment-called the human footprint-and how it has changed. They found that while the human footprint has not grown in direct proportion to population or the economy, some of the most intense pressure is being felt in places with the highest diversity of plant and animal life.

It's become clear that humans are modifying the planet on a very large geological scale, says the study's lead author, forest conservation scientist Oscar Venter of the University of Northern British Columbia. "We thought the timing was right to get a better understanding of where the last wild places on the planet are and how those places have contracted over the last two decades and how the footprint has expanded into them," he says.

The new study is part of a growing research trend that capitalizes on improvements in satellite technology to map and monitor human activities such as deforestation, oil drilling, and movement of refugees. A recent study in Science used satellite data to map poverty. And as sensors become more sensitive, resolution improves. That, combined with more comprehensive satellite coverage, means scientists are able to map how all of these things change on finer and shorter scales, which is what Venter's team did with the human footprint.

Building on the first comprehensive human footprint analysis published by the Wildlife Conservation Society in 2002, Venter and his colleagues used various kinds of satellite data to analyze eight different categories of human impacts, including the extent of built environments, cropland and pasture land, population density, nighttime lights, roads, railways, and navigable waterways. They also used census data for population density and the gROADS project to track roads.

For every square kilometer of land on Earth (excluding Antarctica), each category was scored according to its impact on the environment relative to the other categories. The researchers then combined these scores for each square kilometer for 1993 and 2009, and looked at how things changed.

Much of what they found was predictably depressing. For example, in 1993, just 27 percent of the land had no measurable human footprint. By 2009, that had grown by 9.3 percent, or 23 million square kilometers. Most of the remaining footprint-free land was in places that aren't good for agriculture or cities, such as the Sahara, Gobi, and Australian deserts, the most remote portions of tropical rainforests in the Amazon and Congo, and the tundra. (You can explore the results online with interactive footprint maps, and the maps and data are all publicly available.) The upside of the findings is that while population increased by 23 percent, the average score for the human footprint increased by just 9 percent. Even more promising is the fact that during that same 16-year period, the global economy has grown 153 percent, 16 times the rate of footprint growth.

This is encouraging and potentially very important, says research ecologist Samuel Cushman of the U.S. Forest Service's Rocky Mountain Research Station. "We are in an age of extinction, but the difference between a truly mass extinction and just broad-scale extinction could hinge on this linkage between how fast the human footprint grows and if it is less than population growth or more than population growth."

But the news is not uniformly good. Human pressure on the environment is distributed unevenly, and while some wealthier regions are showing a modest decrease in human impact, other parts of the world have experienced increasingly intense pressure. The footprint more than doubled in areas such as the New Guinea mangroves and the Purus Varzea rain forest in the Amazon, and it jumped more than 1,000 percent in the Baffin coastal tundra. The Torngat Mountain tundra saw an increase of more than 10,000 percent.

Many of these areas experiencing the most pressure are also among the most biodiverse places on Earth. Among the hardest hit are areas with more than 1,500 plant species and areas with a at least 14 vertebrate species that are classified as threatened.

"When we looked at the most species-rich parts of the planet, the biodiversity hotspots, previously we thought about 15 percent of [their extent] was still natural. But our map of the human footprint showed actually only 3 percent of biodiversity hotspots are still natural," Venter says. "This is really important because this is the most biologically valuable real estate on the planet. This is where we have unusually high concentrations of species that you just don't see anywhere else."

Things look a little better for areas with the highest concentration of bird, mammal, and amphibian species, such as the Amazon Basin, which is still largely free from human impact. However, the researchers found that footprint-free territory within these biodiverse areas has rapidly declined since 1993.

These results suggest that the best conservation strategy may be to focus protection efforts on these species-rich areas and on remaining swaths of wilderness.

"They're quite unique, and once they're gone, they're really gone," Venter says. "I think looking at the parts of the planet that are still wild and finding ways of keeping them as they are, keeping them free of humans, should be something that we're really thinking about."

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Maps Show Humans' Growing Impact on the Planet

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The impact humans have on the environment has grown substantially in the last 16 years-so much so that a new study concludes three-quarters of Earth's land surface is under pressure from human activity. But the research also shows that humanity's footprint on the planet hasn't grown as fast as the overall population, and that may give conservationists cause for hope.

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Pollution

Human activities contribute to air pollution, or the emission of harmful substances into the air. While it can be difficult to understand which pollutants are associated with specific effects on the environment

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`Deforistation

Growing populations have to be housed, which means they seek more space to build homes and cities. This often involves clearing forests to make room for urban and suburban development, as well as to provide building materials. Currently, it is estimated that 18 million acres of trees are clear-cut every year.

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Agriculture Domesticated Animals and Genetic Modification

The demand to feed a growing human population has facilitated notable advances in agriculture, which was the first major human innovation to enable our survival as a species. Early agriculture allowed hunter-gatherer cultures to settle an area and cultivate their own food.

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Population Bomb

Human overpopulation has been a concern for scientists since at least 1798, when Thomas Malthus first published his finding that, without significant and ongoing technological innovation, the human population would almost certainly outstrip the planet’s food supply.

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Human activity has had an effect on the environment for thousands of years, from the time of our very earliest ancestors. Since Homo sapiens first walked the earth, we have been modifying the environment around us through agriculture, travel and eventually through urbanization and commercial networks. At this point in earth's physical history, our impact on the environment is so substantial that scientists believe "pristine nature," or ecosystems untouched by human intervention, no longer exist. ¹

In ways both positive and negative-and likely in more ways than you'd even think-human civilization and technology have affected our earth, altering our planet forever. Consider these five tangible impacts our species has had on the environment, and whether you're one who will advance their effects or intercede to halt them.

1. The Population Bomb

Human overpopulation has been affecting the environment for hundreds of years and a concern for scientists since at least 1798, when Thomas Malthus first published his finding that, without significant and ongoing technological innovation, the human population would almost certainly outstrip the planet's food supply. In 1968, this concern was again raised in Stanford professor R. Paul Ehrlich's book "The Population Bomb." ²

Accommodating population growth has been a root cause for much of the impact we've had on our environment. Since Malthus first noted his grave concerns, technological advances have created a new double-edged sword: health and abundance. Our food supply today can support more lives than ever, and advances in medical science have led to increasingly longer lifespans. But this reality has the profound side effect of reducing population turnover and leading to its rapid expansion. So as our quality of life and life expectancy improve, the challenges wrought by overpopulation accelerate as well. ³

2. Agriculture, Domesticated Animals and Genetic Modification

The demand to feed a growing human population has facilitated notable advances in agriculture, which was the first major human innovation to enable our survival as a species. Early agriculture allowed hunter-gatherer cultures to settle an area and cultivate their own food. This immediately impacted the environment by transplanting non-native species to new areas, and by prioritizing the cultivation of certain plants and animals over others. And more recently, advances in genetic modification have raised concerns about the environmental impact of newly developed crops. ⁴

In particular, the domestication of livestock and other species, including dogs and cats, by early humans affected the environment by altering the land in significant ways. Grazing animals contributed to environmental change by depleting native grasses and contributing to soil erosion. And we now know that the rapid expansion of cattle populations to meet human dietary demands has contributed substantially to changes in the composition of gases within the atmosphere. ⁵

The industrialization of agriculture in the last several centuries has exacerbated these effects, but it has also prompted a subsequent wave of counter-movements, which seek to undo the negative effects of human intervention. People today are increasingly aware of the impact vast factory farms have on the environment, and seek to return to smaller farms and even urban gardens. As "eating local" rises in popularity, urban land is being reclaimed for traditional agriculture and the environment is once again altered due to human labor. ⁶

3. Deforestation...and Reforestation

Growing populations have to be housed, which means they seek more space to build homes and cities. This often involves clearing forests to make room for urban and suburban development, as well as to provide building materials. Currently, it is estimated that 18 million acres of trees are clear-cut every year to create space for development and to be used in wood products. ⁷

Deforestation has many effects, including decreasing oxygen levels (and increasing greenhouse gases), elevated risk of soil erosion and the destruction of animal habitats. But as is the case with industrial agriculture, some groups have endeavored to create a positive counter-impact to deforestation's detrimental effects on the environment. Reforestation efforts seek to replace as much forest land as possible every year, and it is currently estimated that about 40 percent of the trees removed each year are being replaced. ⁸

4. Pollution

Human activities affect the environment by contributing to air pollution, or the emission of harmful substances into the air. While it can be difficult to understand which pollutants are associated with specific effects on the environment or public health, it is generally accepted that air pollution can indeed cause public health problems and also harm plant and animal life. ⁹

Pollution isn't just limited to the air. It can affect soil or waterways and can come from human waste, industrial chemicals and other sources. These toxins can exert tremendous effects on the natural world, leading to environmental degradation and problems like acid rain and harmful algal blooms in the ocean.

Environmental protection laws on the local and federal level have been enacted as a means to stem the ecological damage caused by pollution, and some communities have engaged in ongoing conversations aimed toward promoting sustainable, low-impact living.

5. Global Warming and Climate Change

Among the most critically impactful ways that humans have affected the environment is our extraction and consumption of fossil fuels and their attendant CO2 emissions. Recent studies indicate that CO2 emissions contribute to the deterioration of the earth's ozone layer, which may, in turn, contribute to global climate change; this is especially true when emissions are combined with the loss of the carbon-sink effect of forest lands (due to deforestation) and existing particulate matter in the air. ¹⁰ Though the scale and impact of such climate change are up for debate, the scientific community has reached a consensus that human activity does have some degree of impact on the global climate.

Human Impact on the Environment is a Double-edged Sword

The expansion of human population and the requirements of our growing human family place strenuous demands on our environment. Through human intervention, we have altered our ecosystem forever. However, though some of these changes may be negative, humans also have the power to correct our mistakes and change our environment for the better.

Discover how you can contribute to a thriving future for our planet. Explore the online Master of Geographic Information Science from Kent State University, and find your opportunity to work toward the renewal of the earth's ecosystem, from its forest grounds to its water resources and farmlands.

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Learn how everyday human activity is affecting the environment. And how we can correct our past mistakes and make the environment a better place. More here.