Data concerning recognized rights, legal agreements, and public documents.

governance-law

Governance & Law

### Overview  
  
The Roadless Areas dataset includes areas that were at least 1 km from roads in 2013.The data also includes an assessment of the roadless areas' status, quality, and extent of coverage by protected areas. 

  
  
Roads fragment landscapes and enable both human colonization and degradation of ecosystems, which harm biodiversity and ecosystem functions. The planet’s remaining large and ecologically important tracts of roadless areas sustain biodiversity and provide ecosystem services on a worldwide scale. Although 80% of Earth’s terrestrial surface remains roadless, this area is fragmented into ~600,000 patches, more than half of which are less than 1 km² and only 7% of which are larger than 100 km². Global protection of ecologically valuable roadless areas is inadequate, and international protection of roadless areas is urgently needed to halt their continued loss. 

  
  
This dataset was created by CEEM/HNEE/OSM and Ibisch et al. (2016) using 2013 OpenStreetMap roads data.  
  
### Methodology  
  
This data was collected through two sources: OpenStreetMap and the Global Roads Open Access Data Set (gRoads). OpenStreetmap is a project that maps and updates free global geographic data (focusing on roads) with an open-access, grassroots approach. To determine roadless areas, the authors created a 1 km buffer to all roads. gRoads is an open access global set of roads between settlements using a consistent data model (UNSDI-T v.2). 

  
  
A set of ecological properties that reflect the importance to biodiversity, ecological functions, and ecosystem resilience were used to assess all roadless areas. All three indicators were normalized to between 0 and 100 to calculate an additive and unitless index of the ecological value of each roadless area identified. 

  
  
For the full documentation, please click on the “Learn More” link.  
  
### Additional Information  
  
Resource Watch shows only a subset of the dataset. For access to the full dataset and additional information, click on the “Learn more” button.  
  
### Disclaimer  
  
Excerpts of this description page were taken from the source metadata.

Eberswalde University for Sustainable Development (HNE Eberswalde)

Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research (UFZ)

German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv)

No Team

Roadless Areas

2013 Global Roadless Areas (km², thousands)