Australia's terrestrial industrial footprint and ecological intactness
Creators
-
Venegas-Li, Rubén
(Researcher)1
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Atkinson, Scott Consaul
(Researcher)1
-
Aurelio Uba de Andrade Junior, Milton
(Researcher)1
- Fletcher, Rachel (Project member)2
- Owen, Peter (Project member)3
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Morales Barquero, Lucia
(Researcher)1
-
Aska, Bora
(Researcher)4
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Arias-Patino, Miguel
(Researcher)5
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Grantham, Hedley6, 7
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Possingham, Hugh
(Researcher)4
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Venter, Oscar
(Researcher)8
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Ward, Michelle9, 10
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Watson, James
(Project leader)1
- 1. Centre for Biodiversity and Conservation Science, The School of the Environment, University of Queensland, St Lucia, 4072, Australia
- 2. The Wilderness Society, GIS, South Brisbane, Queensland, Australia
- 3. The Wilderness Society Inc., 111 Franklin Street Adelaide SA 5000, Australia
- 4. The University of Queensland
-
5.
University of Northern British Columbia
- 6. Bush Heritage Australia, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia ;
- 7. Center for Ecosystem Science, School of Biological, Earth and Environmental Sciences, University of New South Wales, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia
- 8. Natural Resources and Environmental Studies Institute, University of Northern British Columbia, Prince George, British Columbia V2N 4Z9, Canada
- 9. Griffith University
- 10. ; Centre for Biodiversity and Conservation Science, The School of the Environment, University of Queensland, St Lucia, 4072, Australia
Description
These datasets represent a Human Industrial Footprint (HIF) index map and an Ecological Intactness Index (EII) map for Australia circa 2020-2024. The datasets are distributed in raster format (.tif) and have a spatial resolution of 100 m, mapped on an Australian Albers Equal Area projection (EPSG:3577).
The HIF was created by incorporating 16 nationally relevant pressure layers, also part of the dataset. The pressures used to compute the HIF were 1) intensive land uses, 2) buildings, 3) mining and quarrying, 4) human population density, 5) croplands, 6) pasturelands, 7) forestry plantations, 8) reservoirs and large dams, 9) farm dams, 10) roads, 11) railways, 12) energy transmission lines, 13) oil pipelines, 14) gas pipelines, 15) hiking trails, and 16) navigable waterways. Each pressure layer was assigned a relative score between 0 and 10 to make them comparable. The scored (scaled) pressure layers were then summed to obtain the final HIF map.
The HIF was used to derive the Ecological Intactness Index (EII). The EII is calculated using the HIF, with the intactness index value for each cell parameterised to: a) be proportional to habitat area when there is no habitat fragmentation; b) decline mono-tonically as fragmentation increases, and be sensitive to both the number of nearby patches and the separation between patches, and (c) to be proportional to habitat quality for a given total area of habitat and degree of fragmentation.
In the pressure layer folder, native and modified pasturelands are merged in the "pastures" pressure layer and paved and unpaved roads are in the "roads" layer.
The code to create these maps is also available through this repository. The code is an end‑to‑end GRASS GIS pipeline to rebuild the Human Industrial Footprint Index for continental Australia on a 100 m grid in Albers Australia Equal Area (EPSG:3577). It generates 16 pressure layers, applies hierarchical priority (Urban > Mining > Crops >Pasture), scales each 0–10, and exports individual layers plus the summed index as Cloud‑Optimised GeoTIFFs (COGs).
Acknowledgements
This research was funded by The Wilderness Society.
Contact
Further queries regarding these datasets can be directed to Ruben Venegas (r.venegas@uq.edu.au) and James Watson (james.watson@uq.edu.au).