Anthromes
Context
Erle C. Ellis:
"Human use of land for agriculture and settlements — the key social-ecological infrastructures that sustain humanity — has already transformed more than three-quarters of the terrestrial biosphere into anthropogenic biomes, or anthromes , yielding a host of novel ecologies characterized by their sustained direct interactions with human populations and infrastructures in the forms of crops, pastures, built structures, and other used lands [Figure 01].06 This profound and permanent transformation of Earth’s ecology together with anthropogenic global changes in climate, hydrology, element cycling, biodiversity, and other environmental processes has recently led scientists to recognize the emergence of human systems as a global force transforming the Earth system and the beginning of a new epoch of geologic time, the Anthropocene.
Description
Erle Ellis:
"Anthromes are mosaic landscapes composed both of lands used directly for agriculture and settlements and the ecosystems left embedded within them as remnant, recovering, and less directly used novel ecosystems.25 Less than one-quarter of Earth’s ice-free land remains as wildlands, and mostly in remote areas too cold or too dry to attract humans. The novel ecosystems embedded within anthromes now cover a substantially greater extent than that of wildlands (greater than 35 percent of Earth’s ice-free land), and are dispersed across the biosphere in some of its most productive and diverse regions.