You CAN get there from here

A new global “accessibility” map further demonstrates that humans now have easy access to almost all of Earth’s land. Using global data for roads and other transportation systems, researchers at the European Commission and the World Bank developed a map of access time, in minutes to cities. This has yielded many interesting statistics- for example, more than 90% of Earth’s land is now within 48 hours of a major city.

The funny thing is, for almost a year, I’ve been working with the developer of another such map (and lots of other great stuff), Peter Verburg, to include just this kind of information in the forthcoming third generation of our Anthromes project. There is no question that accessibility to humans transforms the ecology of land, though not just by the accessibility itself – there are still a few more key ingredients in the human/nature soup: good food for future thought!

The details and data are at:

http://bioval.jrc.ec.europa.eu/products/gam/

Related blog post: http://ecotope.org/blogs/post/Anthromes-on-the-cover-of-Frontiers-in-Ecology.aspx