section_path: Humans and land/Land use
section_name: Land use
paragraph_text: Land use
  
  For more than 10,000 years, humans have engaged in activities on land such as hunting, foraging, controlled burning, land clearing, and agriculture. Beginning with the Neolithic Revolution and the spread of agriculture around the world, human land use has significantly altered terrestrial ecosystems, with an essentially global transformation of Earth's landscape by 3000 years ago. From around 1750, human land use has increased at an accelerating rate due to the Industrial Revolution, which created a greater demand for natural resources and caused rapid population growth.
  
  Agriculture includes both crop farming and animal husbandry. A third of Earth's land surface is used for agriculture, with estimated 16.7 million km (6.4 million sq mi) of cropland and 33.5 million km (12.9 million sq mi) of pastureland. This has had significant impacts on Earth's ecosystems. When land is cleared to make way for agriculture, native flora and fauna are replaced with newly introduced crops and livestock. Excessively high agricultural land use is driven by poor management practices (which lead to lower food yields, necessitating more land use), food demand, food waste, and diets high in meat.
  
  Urbanization has led to greater population growth in urban areas in the last century. Although urban areas make up less than 3 percent of Earth's land area, the global population shifted from a majority living in rural areas to a majority living in urban areas in 2007. People living in urban areas depend on food produced in rural areas outside of their cities, which creates greater demand for agriculture and drives land use change well beyond city boundaries. Urbanization also displaces agricultural land because it mainly takes place on the most fertile land. Urban expansion in peri-urban areas fragments agricultural and natural lands, forcing agriculture to move to less fertile land elsewhere. Because this land is less fertile, more land is needed for the same output, which increases the total agricultural land use.
  
  Another form of land use is mining, whereby minerals are extracted from the ground using a variety of methods. Evidence of mining activity dates back to around 3000 BCE in Ancient Egypt. Important minerals include iron ore, mined for use as a raw material; coal, mined for energy production; and gemstones, mined for use in jewellery and currency.