Human settlement dynamics of the Arctic: insights from remote sensing and census observations

In recent years, the Arctic region has garnered attention due to its geo-political and strategic importance: as a reserve for natural resources, commercial routes, and climate activism. Understanding human settlements and their evolution across scales and over time is key to informing stakeholders and policy makers on relevant dynamics. However, the cartographic projections used for global geospatial data often poorly represent the Arctic territory as they are not optimized for polar regions. Herein, we describe GHSL-Arctic, an edition of the Global Human Settlement Layer (GHSL), constituting a comprehensive, up-to-date, and accessible tool for understanding and responding to the rapid changes taking place in the Arctic environment, accounting for this shortcoming. The contribution of this article is two-fold: 1) we present and describe the spatio-temporal variables in GHSL-Arctic, measuring both population and settlements at fine grid scale over the past 50 years (1975-2030), and 2) highlight exemplary analyses, based on GHSL-Arctic, revealing recent settlement patterns and trends in the Arctic.

CARIOLI Alessandra;  UHL Johannes H.;  MAFFENINI Luca;  SCHIAVINA Marcello;  KRASNODĘBSKA Katarzyna;  PESARESI Martino;  FLORIO Pietro;  MELCHIORRI Michele;  KEMPER Thomas; 

2026-02-27

ELSEVIER SCI LTD

JRC141373

1873-7730 (online),   

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0143622826000329,    https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/handle/JRC141373,   

10.1016/j.apgeog.2026.103922 (online),