Basic Driving Factors
Instead of controlling the environment for the benefit of the population, maybe we should control the population to ensure the survival of our environment.
Sir David Attenborough
Introduction Humans have influenced their natural environment as long as mankind exist. For thousands of years this influence was negligible, but at certain moments in time it left its marks on the surrounding landscape. Sometimes these ‘marks’ were left to recover to a more or less ‘natural’ or ‘pristine’ state. It is not always known why this happened, the mysterious rises and declines of ancient cultures are not always well documented. The influence of humans on their surrounding landscape increased at a staggering rate during the last 300 years. Rapid increases in population numbers boosted the need for food and fodder. Land needed for crops and ranching expanded mostly at the cost of forests and natural grasslands.
The most important driving forces for global environmental change occur at several spatial and temporal scales and dimensions, and differ often among regions. Therefore a geographically explicit modeling approach is required. HYDE presents both general topics such as land use/cover, population, livestock, gross domestic product, and value added of industry and/or services as well as specific data categories concerning energy/economy, atmosphere/ocean, and the terrestrial environment. Most data have been organized at the country level, and where possible for the period 1700-2000. Population and land use are available with geographic detail on a 5' x 5' min. longitude/latitude grid. |
