Global ISA dynamics observed by Landsat satellites from 1972 to 2019

For half a century, human activities drastically altered the climate, environment, and ecosystem of the Earth, which restricted the sustainable development and affected human well-being. Impervious surface areas (ISA), i.e., artificial structures with impermeable characteristics, mainly including roofs, paved surfaces, roads, and hardened grounds, are the most affected regions. Using more than three million Landsat satellite images, this research developed the first global impervious surface area (GISA) dataset from 1972 to 2019. Based on 120,777 independent and random reference sites from 270 cities all over the world, the omission error, commission error, and F-score of GISA are 5.16%, 0.82%, and 0.954, respectively.