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Anthropogenic Biomes Version 1
Description of the Data
Anthropogenic biomes, also known as "anthromes" or "human biomes", describe the terrestrial biosphere in its contemporary, human-altered form using global ecosystem units defined by patterns of sustained direct human interaction. Ellis and Ramankutty (2008) delineate 21 anthropogenic biomes based on population density, land use and vegetation cover. The anthropogenic biomes are grouped into six major categories -- dense settlements, villages, croplands, rangeland, forested and wildlands.
This web site provides access to the spatial data sets described in Ellis and Ramankutty’s paper presented in the Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment journal. Users can download the data as one global grid or a grid for each of the 6 populated continents. The data are available in raster GeoTiff and GRID formats.
Methods
A detailed description of the methods utilized to produce the data, as well as research results, are described in Ellis and Ramankutty (download PDF ). Anthropogenic biomes were identified and mapped using a multi-stage procedure based on population (urban, non-urban), land use (percent area of pasture, crops, irrigation, rice and urban land) and land cover (percent area of trees and bare earth). Input datasets include population data (Landscan 2005), land use data (percent area under cropland, pasture, irrigation and rice) and land cover (vegetation continuous fields tree cover and bare earth proportion layers).
Figure 1. Global Map of Anthropogenic Biomes
The multi-stage procedure began by first separating “anthropogenic” cells from “wild” cells based on presence of population, crops, or pastures. The anthropogenic cells were then stratified into population density classes: namely “dense”, “residential”, “populated” and “remote” based on the density of their non-urban population. Then cluster analysis was used to identify natural groupings within each of the strata identified above. Finally the clusters derived above were labeled, and organized into logical groupings, based on their populations, land-use and land-cover characteristics, and their regional distribution, yielding the 18 anthropogenic biome classes and three wild biome classes.
Data Download
The spatial data are provided in raster GeoTiff and ESRI Grid formats. Raster cell sizes are 5” or 0.08333 degree decimal (about 10 kilometers at the equator). To download the zip files with accompanying metadata and documentation, click on the links below. The downloaded compressed zipfiles contain raster data, metadata record and readme file.
| Data Set | GeoTiff | ESRI Grids |
| Global Anthropogenic Biomes | Download | Download |
| Africa Anthropogenic Biomes | Download | Download |
| Asia Anthropogenic Biomes | Download | Download |
| Europe Anthropogenic Biomes | Download | Download |
| Oceania Anthropogenic Biomes | Download | Download |
| North America Anthropogenic Biomes | Download | Download |
| South America Anthropogenic Biomes | Download | Download |
Citation and Acknowledgements
The original work on these data was published in:
- Ellis, E. C. and N. Ramankutty. 2008. Putting people in the map: anthropogenic biomes of the world. Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment 6(8):439-447
SEDAC would like to acknowledge Drs. Ellis and Ramankutty for providing these data for distribution. More information and original data on Anthromes are at: http://ecotope.org/anthromes/
Should you download and use these data, please ensure that any results are accompanied by the following data citation:
- Ellis, E. C. and N. Ramankutty. 2008. Putting people in the map: anthropogenic biomes of the world. Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment 6(8):439-447. Data distributed by the Socioeconomic Data and Applications Center (SEDAC): http://sedac.ciesin.columbia.edu/es/anthropogenicbiomes.html. [Date downloaded]
