National human footprint maps for Peru and Ecuador

Area of Science:

• Ecology
• Conservation Science
• Geographic Information Systems (GIS)

Background:

• Human pressures significantly impact ecosystem naturalness and biodiversity.
• Assessing human influence is crucial for effective conservation strategies and Sustainable Development Goals (SDG15).
• Existing spatial indices often lack historical depth or national coverage for comprehensive analysis.

Purpose of the Study:

• To generate historical Human Footprint (HF) maps for Peru and Ecuador.
• To provide a comprehensive spatial index of human pressures for SDG15 reporting.
• To enable spatiotemporal analysis of human influence for biodiversity monitoring and conservation.

Main Methods:

• Integration of multiple human pressure datasets including built environments, land use/land cover (LULC), roads, population density, and infrastructure.
• Development of national-scale Human Footprint (HF) maps using a standardized scoring and integration approach.
• Production of time-series data for Peru (2012-2021) and selected years for Ecuador (2014-2022).

Main Results:

• Generated national HF maps and individual pressure maps for Peru and Ecuador.
• The dataset offers a decade of data for Peru and multiple data points for Ecuador.
• These maps provide a quantitative measure of human influence across diverse ecosystems.

Conclusions:

• The HF maps offer valuable tools for understanding human impacts on biodiversity in Peru and Ecuador.
• The data supports evidence-based conservation planning and national reporting for SDG15.
• This work facilitates advanced spatiotemporal analyses of human-ecosystem interactions in biodiverse regions.