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Antarctica Is Running Out of Wilderness

hirundo 6y ago
> By some definitions, wilderness encompasses nearly the entire continent, but these researchers used a more restrictive definition—only areas that have never been touched by people. Using a data set of historical and contemporary human activity, they discovered that most of the continent had been disturbed in some way, by scientific research, infrastructure, or tourism. Only about a third still has large areas with no records of human presence, Leihy, one of the researchers, told us. By that extreme definition of wilderness there isn't much on this planet, and I've never been in or near any. It may be a fine definition for the purposes of the study, but in a headline it becomes click bait.
- ceejayoz 6y ago
  > By that extreme definition of wilderness, there isn't much on this planet, and I've never been in or near any. I mean, that's the point, right? That even Antarctica is heavily affected by human activity, and genuinely untouched spots are likely to be limited to stuff like under-ice lakes and deep caves soon?
  - derekp7 6y ago
    I'd like to differentiate between "untouched" and "undamaged".
- swiley 6y ago
  Maybe after they run out people will be allowed to colonize it.
docdeek 6y ago
Interesting article, but running out of wilderness? Antarctica is 5.5 million square miles (14.2 million square kilometers) or about twice the size of Australia. Australia has an estimated 15-23 million buildings [1] (let alone other structures) and there’s PLENTY of wilderness left. According to the article, “littered across the continent are as many as 5,000 permanent structures”. So Antarctica is nearly twice as big and has not even 1% of the structures that Australia has. I’d suggest that there is plenty of empty space down there still. 1: https://www.spatialsource.com.au/gis-data/many-buildings-australia-geoscape-counting https://www.spatialsource.com.au/gis-data/many-buildings-aus...
- gumby 6y ago
  I have a friend at uni melb who until recently spent more than half each year in Antarctica cleaning up old sites (diesel plumes and the like). There is a lot to do. I agree on an absolute scale it’s utterly empty but the parts of interest to humans are not.
_Microft 6y ago
> “The underlying problem has been the assumption that the Antarctic is so vast that we couldn’t possibly be doing damage” How often are we going to repeat this mistake again?
kiliantics 6y ago
This is sad news. What will it take to do as David Attenborough and many other scientists are saying we must: to rewild about 50% of the earth's landmass and oceans? This point gets so little attention despite our very existence, and the existence of most species, depending on it.

> By some definitions, wilderness encompasses nearly the entire continent, but these researchers used a more restrictive definition—only areas that have never been touched by people. Using a data set of historical and contemporary human activity, they discovered that most of the continent had been disturbed in some way, by scientific research, infrastructure, or tourism. Only about a third still has large areas with no records of human presence, Leihy, one of the researchers, told us. By that extreme definition of wilderness there isn't much on this planet, and I've never been in or near any. It may be a fine definition for the purposes of the study, but in a headline it becomes click bait.

ceejayoz 6y ago
> By that extreme definition of wilderness, there isn't much on this planet, and I've never been in or near any. I mean, that's the point, right? That even Antarctica is heavily affected by human activity, and genuinely untouched spots are likely to be limited to stuff like under-ice lakes and deep caves soon?
- derekp7 6y ago
  I'd like to differentiate between "untouched" and "undamaged".
swiley 6y ago
Maybe after they run out people will be allowed to colonize it.

docdeek 6y ago

Interesting article, but running out of wilderness? Antarctica is 5.5 million square miles (14.2 million square kilometers) or about twice the size of Australia. Australia has an estimated 15-23 million buildings [1] (let alone other structures) and there’s PLENTY of wilderness left. According to the article, “littered across the continent are as many as 5,000 permanent structures”. So Antarctica is nearly twice as big and has not even 1% of the structures that Australia has. I’d suggest that there is plenty of empty space down there still. 1: https://www.spatialsource.com.au/gis-data/many-buildings-australia-geoscape-counting https://www.spatialsource.com.au/gis-data/many-buildings-aus...

gumby 6y ago
I have a friend at uni melb who until recently spent more than half each year in Antarctica cleaning up old sites (diesel plumes and the like). There is a lot to do. I agree on an absolute scale it’s utterly empty but the parts of interest to humans are not.

_Microft 6y ago

> “The underlying problem has been the assumption that the Antarctic is so vast that we couldn’t possibly be doing damage” How often are we going to repeat this mistake again?

kiliantics 6y ago

This is sad news. What will it take to do as David Attenborough and many other scientists are saying we must: to rewild about 50% of the earth's landmass and oceans? This point gets so little attention despite our very existence, and the existence of most species, depending on it.