Global patterns in human consumption of net primary production

By M. Imhoff, L. Bounoua, Taylor H. Ricketts, C. Loucks, Robert Harriss, W. Lawrence. Nature, 2004

698 citations recorded by the source corpus.

The human population and its consumption profoundly affect the Earth's ecosystems. A particularly compelling measure of humanity's cumulative impact is the fraction of the planet's net primary production that we appropriate for our own use. Net primary production—the net amount of solar energy converted to plant organic matter through photosynthesis—can be measured in units of elemental carbon and represents the primary food energy source for the world's ecosystems. Human appropriation of net primary production, apart from leaving less for other species to use, alters the composition of the atmosphere, levels of biodiversity, energy flows within food webs and the provision of important ecosystem services. Here we present a global map showing the amount of net primary production required by humans and compare it to the total amount generated on the landscape. We then derive a spatial balance sheet of net primary production ‘supply’ and ‘demand’ for the world. We show that human appropriation of net primary production varies spatially from almost zero to many times the local primary production. These analyses reveal the uneven footprint of human consumption and related environmental impacts, indicate the degree to which human populations depend on net primary production ‘imports’ and suggest policy options for slowing future growth of human appropriation of net primary production.

Subfields: Ecology, Environmental Engineering, Renewable Energy, Sustainability and the Environment

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/1c6af4018947f15bb4e7ff3746032e74b43831ac

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Citations in the corpus

Correlates of extinction risk in squamate reptiles: the relative importance of biology, geography, threat and range size (2016, neutral): “…We tested the following environmental predictor variables, based on hypotheses 156 derived from the literature (Table 1): annual precipitation (in mm), annual temperature (˚C), 157 minimum elevation (Hijmans et al., 2005), and Net Primary Productivity (NPP; 158 grams/m2/year; Imhoff et al., 2004).”
Using Nighttime Satellite Imagery as a Proxy Measure of Human Well-Being (2013, methodology): “The LandScan population data produced by the U.S. Department of Energy at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) represents ambient population count (averaged over 24 h) at approximately 1 km new datasets are released because the makers of the LandScan data at ORNL caution against using the data as a ”
Divergent responses of sympatric species to livestock encroachment at fine spatiotemporal scales (2017, background): “With the increase in the global human population and industrialization of human societies, competition between people and wildlife for limited resources such as space has become increasingly intense (Cohen, 2003; Imhoff et al., 2004; Liu et al., 2016a).”
Global drivers of population density in terrestrial vertebrates (2018, methodology): “In principle, it also determines the number of prey/predators (prey availability/predatory pressure), but this is likely to be compensated by a lower relative abundance and greater richness of prey Net primary productivity NPP NPP is directly or indirectly related to energy available for individuals”
The ecological economics of land degradation: impacts on ecosystem service values. (2016, methodology): “Mapping Degradation of Supply – Land Degradation Haberl et al. (2007) made an assessment of HANPP as a measure of land use intensity using process models and agricultural statistics.”
Persistence of Large Mammal Faunas as Indicators of Global Human Impacts (2007, background): “DISCUSSION Intact faunas represent another ecologically based measure- ment of human impact (Imhoff et al. 2004; Sanderson et al. 2002; Vitousek et al. 1997).”
Global forecasts of urban expansion to 2030 and direct impacts on biodiversity and carbon pools (2012, background): “However, the process of urban expansion also results in carbon emissions because of the land clearing, reductions in local primary productivity (8) and, depending on the climate and density of the new development, has the potential to either increase or decrease per capita greenhouse gas emissions.”
The Material Stock–Flow–Service Nexus: A New Approach for Tackling the Decoupling Conundrum (2017, background): “Population maps [122,123] are widely used to downscale national or regional data to maps, following the assumption that human drivers or impacts scale with population [124,125].”
The large-scale impact of offshore wind farm structures on pelagic primary productivity in the southern North Sea (2017, background): “Primary productivity represents the major energy source for ecosystems globally (Imhoﬀ et al 2004).”
Late bloomers and baby boomers: ecological drivers of longevity in squamates and the tuatara (2015, methodology): “In a similar fashion, we intersected species ranges with NPP data (in g C m–2 year–1) from Imhoff et al. (2004).”
Conservation from the bottom up: forecasting effects of global change on dynamics of organic matter and management needs for river networks (2011, background): “(Delong and Brusven 1994), and the magnitude of this reduction in detritus will increase with human population growth and caloric demand (Imhoff et al. 2004).”