On: What's Earth's dominant species by mass?

[gorgoiler]

I wanted to prove you wrong by picking five random points on Earth and showing that, in the grand scheme of things, most of the planet is still relatively wild and we bias towards thinking we rule the place because most of us cluster together away from the wilderness.

Point 1: Eastern Mongolia, middle of nowhere. Check! gorgoiler proven correct!

Point 2: Sri Lanka. Some roads nearby. Ok. But still mostly natural landscape.

Then Sweden and Greece. Roads and towns all around. Peru, next to a road. The next two in Australia and Argentina came back fairly wild, albeit with large stripes of deforested land (power lines or fire breaks?).

But no, I was wrong and you are right. We’re everywhere.

[hdgvhicv → gorgoiler]

You limited yourself to land.

3/4 of earth is water. A quarter of the rest is uninhabitable deserts and glaciers

Of the 20% of habitable land, about half of it is forest and shrub

But about 10% of the surface is agriculture, which is a large amount of the planet.

(Urban usage, roads, etc is basically zero. Even in city states like Simgpaore only half is “urban”, and half is vegetation.

[1718627440 → gorgoiler]

All the forests in central europe are artificially planted or influenced after the middle ages. Whole of Italy used to be full of woods before the Romans.

[ragazzina → gorgoiler]

I've always imagined the US as including vast expanses of nothing, yet I recently heard that you are never more than 20 km away from a public road.

[psychoslave → gorgoiler]

Did you try active volcanoes and under water places?