Intensive land-use systems include major anthropogenic enterprises of cropping, pastoralism, plantation farming, and urbanisation. Human intervention is a dominating influence on this biome, also known as the “anthrome”.

Maintenance of these systems is contingent on continuing human interventions, including alterations to the physical structure of vegetation and substrates (e.g. clearing, earthworks, and drainage), the supplementation of resources (e.g. with irrigation and fertilisers), and the introduction and control of biota.

These interventions maintain disequilibrium community structure and composition, low endemism, and low functional and taxonomic diversity. Target biota are genetically manipulated (by selective breeding or molecular engineering) to promote rapid growth rates, efficient resource capture, enhanced resource allocation to production tissues, and tolerance to harsh environmental conditions, predators, and diseases. Non-target biota include widely dispersed, cosmopolitan opportunists with short lifecycles.

Many intensive land use systems are maintained as artificial mosaics of contrasting patch types at scales of metres to hundreds of metres. Typically, but not exclusively, they are associated with temperate or subtropical climates and the natural availability of freshwater and nutrients from fertile soils on flat to undulating terrain accessible by machinery. The antecedent ecosystems that they replaced include forests, shrublands, grasslands and palustrine wetlands (T1, T2, T3, T4 and TF1).

On global and regional scales, intensive land-use systems are engaged in climate feedback processes via alterations to the water cycle and the release of greenhouse gases from vegetation, soils, livestock, and fossil fuels. On local scales, temperatures may be modified by human-built structures (e.g. heat-island effects) or may be artificially controlled