Human Impacts by the Numbers
The greatest experiment of the last 10,000 years is the presence and action of modern human beings on planet Earth. At this point, the consequences of this experiment are being felt on many fronts. Yet, many people still hold the view that because the world is so “huge”, humans cannot really make a substantial impact. The mission of this database is to provide a resource for anyone to rapidly find — and discover — numbers that quantify the impact humans have on the planet. Associated with this database is a publication in the scientific journal Patterns which serves as a reference for what we believe are the most important quantities to know when considering the influence humans have on the planet.
This project began with Rob Phillips and Ron Milo who both run academic research groups dedicated to quantitative dissections of biological and physical phenomena and have seen how incredibly useful having easy access to quantitative data can be on the path to discovery. Aside from a variety of scientific publications, Rob and Ron co-authored Cell Biology by the Numbers which explores phenomena in cell biology through a quantitative lens. Additionally, they have built and curated the BioNumbers Database which, in the spirit of the Human Impacts Database, is meant to serve as a quantitative reference in molecular and cellular biology.
Contacting Us
We welcome constructive feedback on everything from how to improve the search to the nitty-gritty details of individual numbers. To reach us, you can do so either through the Contact Us page, emailing the administrators collectively, or contacting the administrators individually through the information provided below.Referencing this database
This database and its original content is distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike International 4.0 license, with all underlying data retaining their license as per the original source.To cite Anthroponumbers.org please refer to: Chure et al. “Anthroponumbers.org: A Quantitative Database of Human Impacts on Planet Earth”. Patterns (3), 2022. doi: 10.1016/j.patter.2022.100552.
When using a specific entry from the database, it is recommended that you also specify the Human Impacts Database 5 digit ID (e.g. "HuID 43599, Chure et al. 2022"). For data entries containing time series where a specific value is referenced, we suggest including the timepoint in the HuID reference such as "HuID 43599:1976". If extensive use of underlying data is used, please also reference the original source in addition to the Human Impacts Database.
Funding & Support
This database stems from the generous financial support of the Resnick Sustainability Institute at the California Institute of Technology and from the Schwartz-Reisman Collaborative Science Program.Database Administrators
This database is developed and maintained by a group of quantitative scientists covering the biological and environmental sciences. A brief bio of each contributor, along with contact information, can be found below.Griffin Chure, PhD (username: gchure) ︁
Griffin Chure is an NSF Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Department of Biology at Stanford University advised by Professor Jonas Cremer. Griffin earned Bachelor's Degrees in Biology and Chemistry from the University of Utah, followed by a PhD in Biochemistry and Molecular Biophysics from the California Institute of Technology under the guidance of Rob Phillips. His current research focuses on physical modeling of bacterial evolution and quantitative descriptions of the myriad ways in which humans impact the Earth. Griffin is responsible for front- and backend-engineering of the database as well as its maintenance and improvement, including data curation. He is supported by the National Science Foundation.
Rachel A. Banks, PhD (username: rbanks)
Rachel Banks is a scientist at CZ Biohub studying mechanochemical signaling and collective behavior during zebrafish organogenesis in Adrian Jacobo and Shalin Mehta's groups. She obtained bachelors degrees in biochemistry and biophysics at the University of Pennsylvania followed by her PhD at Caltech in Biochemistry and Molecular Biophysics with Rob Phillips. During her PhD work, she studied the self-organization of cytoskeletal assemblies and the myriad ways humans are impacting the Earth.
Avi Flamholz, PhD (username: flamholz) Avi Flamholz is a Postdoctoral Scholar in Biology and Biological Engineering at the California Institute of Technology co-mentored by Rob Phillips and Dianne Newman. Avi holds a bachelor’s degree in Computer Science and Applied Mathematics from Princeton University and has worked on computer vision at Google and dynamic vehicle routing at Via Transportation. In 2010, Avi began studying quantitative and synthetic biology, working with Ron Milo at the Weizmann Institute of Science (Israel) and completing a PhD studying the CO2 concentrating mechanism of Cyanobacteria with David Savage at UC Berkeley. Avi's current research focuses on understanding the physical limits of microbial metabolism in soils.
Nicholas Sarai (username: nsarai) Nicholas Sarai is a PhD Candidate in Biochemistry and Molecular Biophysics at the California Institute of Technology where he is advised by Professor Frances Arnold. Nicholas received his bachelor’s degree in biochemistry from the University of Denver. Prior to coming to Caltech, he worked on enzymatic biomass degradation and metabolic engineering of hyperthermophilic bacteria at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory. Nicholas’s current research centers upon engineering enzymes for bioremediation of recalcitrant pollutant molecules.
Mason Kamb (username: masonify)
Mason Kamb is a PhD student in the Department of Applied Physics at Stanford University. He previously obtained a bachelor's degree in Physics and Computer Science at the University of Washington. Prior to joining Stanford, he was a Research Associate in the Theory Group at the Chan Zuckerberg Biohub. His research has included work on applied dynamical systems, cell- and tissue-level biophysics, and machine learning methods for biological data analysis.
Ignacio Lopez-Gomez, PhD (username: ilopezgo)
Ignacio Lopez-Gomez is a Research Scientist at Google Research. He holds a PhD in Environmental Science from the California Institute of Technology, a bachelor’s degree in Aerospace Engineering from Universidad Politécnica de Madrid (Spain) and a Master’s in the same field from Institut Supérieur de l’Aéronautique et de l’Espace (France). His current research focuses on climate modeling, extreme weather, and artificial intelligence.
Kian Faizi (username: kfaizi)
Kian Faizi is a biology PhD student at the California Institute of Technology, where he is advised by Rob Phillips. He obtained his bachelor's degree in molecular biology and math from the University of California, San Diego. He was an inaugural New Science fellow at Harvard Medical School, and previously worked on computational plant biology at the Salk Institute. His current research interests lie in how bacteria adapt to changing environments, especially as driven by human activity.
