The paper
E.C. Ellis et al., “Anthropogenic transformation of the biomes, 1700 to 2000,” Glob Ecol Biogeogr, 19:589-606, 2010. Free F1000 Evaluation
The finding
To accurately measure the changes to the terrestrial biosphere on a global scale, Erle Ellis at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, and coworkers integrated 300 years worth of information about human population with natural and human-induced changes in vegetation. They found that the biosphere switched from mostly wild to being dominated by human activity as recently as the beginning of the last century—the first demonstration of a worldwide effect.
The tool
Ellis integrated data “in a very elegant way,” says Faculty Member Rik Leemans. The researchers queried the land-use data with a series of “if-then” questions that let them classify the usage into more descriptive categories, which Ellis calls “anthromes”—such as wild, populated, and unused land within populated areas—and examined how these categories changed over ...
