A shift from human-directed to undirected wild land disturbances in the USA

Land disturbances are fundamental drivers of terrestrial ecosystem dynamics, influencing biodiversity, carbon cycling and land–atmosphere interactions. An understanding of changes in their regimes is crucial for predicting future ecosystem trajectories and guiding sustainable land management. Here we leverage the long-term record of Landsat imagery to create high-resolution (30 m) maps of annual land disturbance agents across the contiguous USA from 1988 to 2022. We find that 178.50 million hectares of US land have been cumulatively disturbed over this period. Human-directed disturbances account for 65% of this total, driven by logging, agricultural disturbance and construction. Our analysis reveals a widespread decline in human-directed disturbances (−59.21 kha yr−1) alongside a countervailing surge (20.31 kha yr−1) in less controllable, undirected ‘wild’ disturbances (fire, wind/geohazard and vegetation stress), which account for 24% of the total disturbed area. The disturbance regime shift analysis finds that although human-directed disturbances are now declining in frequency, wild disturbance frequencies are increasing at an accelerated pace. The patch size of human-directed disturbances is shrinking, while the wild disturbance patch size shows both expanding and contracting trends. Disturbance severity is rising across most of the USA. Our findings highlight an urgent need to understand and adapt to these diverging disturbance trajectories, as they will profoundly shape the future of US landscapes. Direct human impact on land disturbances in the USA is declining, while less controllable, undirected wild disturbances are increasing, according to a long-term record of high-resolution satellite imagery.