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As the world population grows, more than half of the Earth’s land area is expected to experience increasing human-wildlife overlap by 2070, according to a new study from the University of Michigan’s School for Environment and Sustainability (SEAS). This overlap could lead to increased human-wildlife conflict, making it critical for urban planners, environmentalists, and countries committed to conservation to understand where such overlaps might occur.

“We found that the overlap between human and wild populations will increase to about 57% of the world’s land area, but will only decrease to about 12% of the world’s land area. We also found that the overlap between agricultural and forest areas will increase significantly in the future,” said Deqiang Ma, lead author of the study and a postdoctoral fellow at the UM Institute for Global Change Biology in SEAS.

Neil Carter, associate professor at SEAS, is the study’s principal investigator, and Brian Weeks, assistant professor at SEAS, is co-author.

Read the full press release on the Michigan News website.

Read the study in Science Advances.