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| title | chunk | source | category | tags | date_saved | instance |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Anthropogenic biome | 3/3 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropogenic_biome | reference | science, encyclopedia | 2026-05-05T16:00:46.809220+00:00 | kb-cron |
=== Implications of an anthropogenic biosphere === Humans have fundamentally altered global patterns of biodiversity and ecosystem processes. It is no longer possible to explain or predict ecological patterns or processes across the Earth without considering the human role. Human societies began transforming terrestrial ecology more than 50 000 years ago, and evolutionary evidence has been presented demonstrating that the ultimate causes of human transformation of the biosphere are social and cultural, not biological, chemical, or physical. Anthropogenic biomes offer a new way forward by acknowledging human influence on global ecosystems and moving us toward models and investigations of the terrestrial biosphere that integrate human and ecological systems.
=== Challenges facing biodiversity in the anthropogenic biosphere ===
==== Extinctions ==== Over the past century, anthrome extent and land use intensity increased rapidly together with growing human populations, leaving wildlands without human population or land use in less than one quarter of the terrestrial biosphere. This massive transformation of Earth's ecosystems for human use has occurred with enhanced rates of species extinctions. Humans are directly causing species extinctions, especially of megafauna, by reducing, fragmenting and transforming native habitats and by overexploiting individual species. Current rates of extinctions vary greatly by taxa, with mammals, reptiles and amphibians especially threatened; however there is growing evidence that viable populations of many, if not most native taxa, especially plants, may be sustainable within anthromes. With the exception of especially vulnerable taxa, the majority of native species may be capable of maintaining viable populations in anthromes.
==== Conservation ==== Anthromes present an alternative view of the terrestrial biosphere by characterizing the diversity of global ecological land cover patterns created and sustained by human population densities and land use while also incorporating their relationships with biotic communities. Biomes and ecoregions are limited in that they reduce human influences, and an increasing number of conservation biologists have argued that biodiversity conservation must be extended to habitats directly shaped by humans. Within anthromes, including densely populated anthromes, humans rarely use all available land. As a result, anthromes are generally mosaics of heavily used lands and less intensively used lands. Protected areas and biodiversity hotspots are not distributed equally across anthromes. Less populated anthromes contain a greater proportion of protected areas. While 23.4% of remote woodland anthrome is protected, only 2.3% of irrigated village anthrome is protected. There is increasing evidence that suggests that biodiversity conservation can be effective in both densely and sparsely settled anthromes. A combination of land sharing and land sparing in working landscapes and multifunctional landscapes are increasingly popular as conservation strategies.
== See also == Landscape ecology Landscape-scale conservation Novel ecosystem Agroecology Technoecosystem Technodiversity
== References ==
== External links == Putting the "Me" in Biome : Educational Resource at National Geographic Anthropogenic Biomes at NASA Anthropogenic Biomes project web site (with maps, educational materials, downloadable data)