How much land on Earth is inhabited? - Curious Meerkat (2024)

FAQs

How much land on Earth is inhabited? - Curious Meerkat? ›

Answer: Approximately 10%. This question is an interesting one because, when my friend asked me the other day, I could tell her confidently that not only did science know the answer, science had multiple different ways to quantify that answer, but that I had absolutely no idea what it was.

roughly 900,000 km^2 of human-covered land worldwide.” “So on the one hand, you could say from these results that 10% of Earth is inhabited by humans.

The total land surface area of Earth is about 57,308,738 square miles, of which about 33% is desert and about 24% is mountainous. Subtracting this uninhabitable 57% (32,665,981 mi²) from the total land area leaves 24,642,757 square miles or 15.77 billion acres of habitable land.

In fact, even when disregarding our expansive undiscovered oceans, reportedly over 65% of the whole earth is unexplored; think Greenland! So, despite our constant intrigue of exploration and adventure as a human race, we have a lot more to discover.

The Star Mountains Of Papua New Guinea

Northern Forest Complex is a 12,000-square-mile tract that runs along the border from India to China in Burma's Kachin State. Due to the regions isolation it is relatively untouched and unexplored by humans.

There are over 510 million square kilometers of area on the surface of Earth, but less than 30% of this is covered by land. The rest is water, in the form of vast oceans.

As air all around us, water covered almost 71% of our earth's surface. The remaining 29 % of the earth is covered by land means soil, also a natural resource.

Roughly 1.3 billion years from now, "humans will not be able to physiologically survive, in nature, on Earth" due to sustained hot and humid conditions. In about 2 billion years, the oceans may evaporate when the sun's luminosity is nearly 20% more than it is now, Kopparapu said.

Despite this uncertainty, most analyses tend to conclude that close to half of habitable land is used for agriculture.

World Population Clock: 8.1 Billion People (LIVE, 2024) - Worldometer.

Have we explored 100% of land? ›

Unlike the oceans, almost every place on land has been visited by people. By using new technology, scientists can now learn more about remote places that are difficult for us to travel to, such as areas that are very cold, very wet, very dry, or very high.

Almost 80% of the ocean has never been explored, mapped, or even seen by mankind. This is an unsettling thought on its own, not to mention the fact that 71% of the earth's surface is made up of water; almost 58% of the world is unknown to the human race (1).

North Sentinel Island, part of the Andaman Islands in the Indian Ocean, has remained virtually untouched. A tribe of indigenous people, known as the Sentinelese, are believed to inhabit the remote island.

Only about 5% of the land has cities, towns, or roads. About half the land is completely undeveloped. Especially in the western half of the country which is mostly forest or mountainous with some desert in the southwest. The government owns about a third of the land, most of it national forests or parks.

What percentage of the earth's land mass has been walked on by humans throughout our entire existance? I would say nearly 95%, only parts of areas such as Antarctica and Greenland have regions where a human foot has not tread.

So, with only room enough for each person to spin around with their arms extended, the entire human population could mathematically fit in an area the size of the largest island in the Hawaiian island chain, the Island of Hawai'i (10,430 km²)!