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A recent global study has noted that nearly a quarter of the Earth’s land has undergone adverse transformation due to by human activities since 1990. This poses a growing threat to biodiversity and the overall health of the ecosystems.
The study was published in the journal Scientific Data on April 10, 2025 by a team of researchers from two American institutions — Department of Fish, Wildlife and Conservation Biology of the Colorado State University and The Nature Conservancy, a Virginia-based environment organisation.
The study provides the most updated and detailed global maps that encapsulate the rising anthropogenic stress on land and elucidates how agro-industrial activities such as farming, urban development, energy production and infrastructure have reshaped natural ecosystems over the course of three decades.
It also supports global biodiversity goals, such as the 30x30 target to protect 30 per cent of land and sea by 2030 under the United Nations' Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework.
To create these maps, researchers used a method termed as the Human Modification Framework, which helps in estimating the extent to which humans have altered the natural environment. It mapped 16 different types of human pressures like farming, construction, energy use and pollution.
These threats are grouped into eight main categories and shown on detailed maps that cover the entire world at very fine scales (90 and 300 meters).
The study shows that by 2022 about 43 per cent of the Earth’s land remained minimally modified but 27 per cent had low, 20 per cent moderate and 10 per cent high levels of modifications.
This means that around 31 million square kilometres of land, nearly a quarter of Earth’s land area have been significantly altered since 1990.
The main drivers of these changes was agriculture, which alone accounted for nearly 47 per cent of all modified land. Other major contributions were transportation infrastructure (roads, railways and power lines), human accessibility and urban development.
Additionally, there are regional variations when it comes to adverse transformation of land assets.
The lands in the Indomalayan region (which includes parts of South and Southeast Asia) showed the highest level of human modification, due to dense populations, intense farming and urban expansion.
In contrast, Australasia (Australia and nearby islands) underwent lowest transformation.
The study also found that modification levels are increasing steadily, with the global human modifications score rising by about 57 per cent per year since 1990.
The most rapid increases were seen in built up areas where cities and towns expanded by over four per cent each year.
The researchers also pointed out that about 29 per cent of countries and 31 per cent of ecosystems are especially vulnerable. These places where human pressure has increased faster than average and where less than 30 per cent of the land is under any kind of protection.
On an average, nearly three different human threats are present in each area affected, meaning that conservation efforts will need to deal with multiple overlapping pressures not just one.