Global Wilderness Areas Inventory from 1989 Reconnaissance Study

The World Wilderness Areas dataset is a reconnaissance-level inventory of undeveloped land shaped primarily by natural forces. It was created by the Sierra Club and the World Bank's Center for Earth Resource Analysis, integrated by UNEP/GRID, and published in 1989. The data covers approximately 50 million square kilometers, representing about one-third of the Earth's land surface, and includes 1089 polygons in ARC/INFO vector format.

Use Cases

• Modeling global conservation priorities based on wilderness area polygons.
• Analyzing human encroachment by overlaying wilderness data with infrastructure or settlement maps.
• Assessing regional wilderness percentages for countries like Canada (65%) or Algeria (59%).
• Studying the distribution of wilderness across continents like Eurasia and Africa.

Strengths

• Defines wilderness with specific criteria: excludes areas with roads/settlements and applies a 6 km proximity buffer and a 400,000-hectare minimum size.
• Provides a global spatial extent from 83.62°N to -55.65°S latitude and -180° to 180° longitude.
• Contains 1089 polygons and 1310 arcs in a 3.5 MB ARC/INFO export file.

Limitations

• Last updated 1993-03-01 23:59:59.999000; freshness should be verified.
• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Data may reflect geographic and methodological bias inherent to the 1989 source maps and exclusion rules.

Provenance

Source

Sierra Club and World Bank's Center for Earth Resource Analysis, integrated by UNEP/GRID.

Collection Method

Created from U.S. Defense Mapping Agency navigation charts; areas showing human constructs were eliminated, with proximity buffers applied.

Time Range

Based on a 1989 publication; snapshot likely reflects late 1980s conditions.

Freshness

Last updated 1993-03-01 23:59:59.999000

Geography

Global land surface.