Marine Wilderness

On land, rapid declines in wilderness have led to urgent calls for its protection. In contrast, little is known about the extent and protection of marine wilderness. This dataset is the first to systematically map marine wilderness globally by identifying areas that have both very little impact (lowest 10%) from 15 anthropogenic stressors and also a very low combined cumulative impact from these stressors. Approximately ∼13% of the ocean meets this definition of global wilderness, with most being located in the high seas.

Realm-specific wilderness extent varies considerably, with >16 million km2 (8.6%) in the Warm Indo-Pacific, down to <2,000 km2 (0.5%) in Temperate Southern Africa. Also of great importance, the marine protected area estate holds only 4.9% of global wilderness and 4.1% of realm-specific wilderness, very little of which is in biodiverse ecosystems such as coral reefs.

See: Jones, K.R., Klein, C.J., Halpern, B.S., et al. 2018. The Location and Protection Status of Earth’s Diminishing Marine Wilderness. Current Biology 28, 2506-2512.e3 [https://www.cell.com/current-biology/abstract/S0960-9822(18)30772-3].

Data and Resources

This dataset has no data

Additional Info

Field	Value
Source	https://app.mapx.org/static.html?views=MX-ZVPND-DCYG0-0X4LB&zoomToViews=true#JAAc6
Author	UNEP/GRID-Geneva
Maintainer	UNEP/GRID-Geneva
Last Updated	December 7, 2022, 08:13 (UTC)
Created	December 7, 2022, 08:13 (UTC)
GUID	MX-ZVPND-DCYG0-0X4LB
Issued	2018-06-05 07:20:07
Language	EN
Modified	2021-12-01 18:47:02
Publisher email	info@mapx.org
Publisher name	UNEP/GRID-Geneva
Theme	Web Map
data_type	geospatial
keywords_m49	WLD
projects_description	UNEP Colombia
projects_id	MX-SXE-0C1-TTW-KC8-VP4
projects_title	UNEP Colombia
range_end_at_year	2021
range_start_at_year	2018
source_abstract	On land, rapid declines in wilderness have led to urgent calls for its protection. In contrast, little is known about the extent and protection of marine wilderness. This dataset is the first to systematically map marine wilderness globally by identifying areas that have both very little impact (lowest 10%) from 15 anthropogenic stressors and also a very low combined cumulative impact from these stressors. Approximately ∼13% of the ocean meets this definition of global wilderness, with most being located in the high seas. Realm-specific wilderness extent varies considerably, with >16 million km2 (8.6%) in the Warm Indo-Pacific, down to <2,000 km2 (0.5%) in Temperate Southern Africa. Also of great importance, the marine protected area estate holds only 4.9% of global wilderness and 4.1% of realm-specific wilderness, very little of which is in biodiverse ecosystems such as coral reefs. See: Jones, K.R., Venter, O., Fuller, R.A., Allan, J.R., Maxwell, S.L., Negret, P.J., Watson, J.E.M., 2018. One-third of global protected land is under intense human pressure. Science 360, 788–791.https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aap9565 [\"https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aap9565\"target=_blank]
source_title	Marine Wilderness
spatial	WLD