Australia's terrestrial industrial footprint and ecological intactness

Abstract

Australia's unique biodiversity faces significant threats from anthropogenic activities that drive habitat destruction and degradation. This study presents the first comprehensive national-scale cumulative pressure map for terrestrial Australia since the 1980s, providing key insights into human disturbance of the landscape. We developed a Human Industrial Footprint (HIF) index map at a 100 m spatial resolution, incorporating 16 nationally relevant pressure layers, which offers a contemporary assessment of cumulative pressures on Australia's landscapes. The HIF was used to derive an Ecological Intactness Index (EII), which accounts for habitat loss, quality, and fragmentation, to provide an estimate of an area's structural intactness. A technical validation comparing visually scored pressures in 1397 stratified random samples using high-resolution satellite images revealed a strong agreement with the mapped pressure values (the HIF). We also conducted an uncertainty (sensitivity) analysis by adjusting individual pressure scores by up to ±50 % across 100 000 simulations, which showed a moderate impact on cumulative pressure scores, confirming the robustness of our approach. We believe both the HIF and EII datasets can be valuable tools for guiding conservation efforts, such as informing protected area expansion, ecosystem restoration priorities, and biodiversity offset strategies. By offering a detailed assessment of cumulative pressures and ecological integrity, this study addresses a critical knowledge gap, and can support evidence-based decision-making for Australia's biodiversity conservation and sustainable development objectives.