School of Biological Sciences, Monash University, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia.
Global Change Institute, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa.
Nature. 2020 Jul;583(7817):567-571. doi: 10.1038/s41586-020-2506-3. Epub 2020 Jul 15.
Recent assessments of Earth's dwindling wilderness have emphasized that Antarctica is a crucial wilderness in need of protection. Yet human impacts on the continent are widespread, the extent of its wilderness unquantified and the importance thereof for biodiversity conservation unknown. Here we assemble a comprehensive record of human activity (approximately 2.7 million records, spanning 200 years) and use it to quantify the extent of Antarctica's wilderness and its representation of biodiversity. We show that 99.6% of the continent's area can still be considered wilderness, but this area captures few biodiversity features. Pristine areas, free from human interference, cover a much smaller area (less than 32% of Antarctica) and are declining as human activity escalates. Urgent expansion of Antarctica's network of specially protected areas can both reverse this trend and secure the continent's biodiversity.
最近对地球日渐减少的荒野的评估强调指出，南极洲是一个需要保护的关键荒野地区。然而，人类对该大陆的影响广泛存在，其荒野的范围尚未量化，对生物多样性保护的重要性也未知。在这里，我们汇集了一份全面的人类活动记录（约 270 万条记录，跨越 200 年），并利用它来量化南极洲荒野的范围及其生物多样性的代表性。我们表明，该大陆 99.6%的地区仍可被视为荒野，但这些地区很少具有生物多样性特征。未受人类干扰的原始地区只覆盖了较小的面积（不到南极洲的 32%），并且随着人类活动的加剧正在减少。紧急扩大南极洲的特别保护区网络可以扭转这一趋势，并确保该大陆的生物多样性。
