UMBC’s Erle Ellis and international team show people have shaped Earth’s ecology for 12,000 years

Abstract

New research published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) shows that land use by human societies has reshaped ecology across most of Earth’s land for at least 12,000 years. The research team, from more than a dozen institutions around the world, compared the history of global land use with current patterns of biodiversity and conservation. Their work revealed that the main cause of the current biodiversity crisis is not human destruction of uninhabited wildlands, but rather the appropriation, colonization, and intensified use of lands previously managed sustainably.