Quantifying and mapping the human appropriation of net primary production in earth's terrestrial ecosystems

By H. Haberl, K. Erb, F. Krausmann, Veronika Gaube, A. Bondeau, C. Plutzar, S. Gingrich, Wolfgang Lucht, Marina Fischer‐Kowalski. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2007

1,457 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Human appropriation of net primary production (HANPP), the aggregate impact of land use on biomass available each year in ecosystems, is a prominent measure of the human domination of the biosphere. We present a comprehensive assessment of global HANPP based on vegetation modeling, agricultural and forestry statistics, and geographical information systems data on land use, land cover, and soil degradation that localizes human impact on ecosystems. We found an aggregate global HANPP value of 15.6 Pg C/yr or 23.8% of potential net primary productivity, of which 53% was contributed by harvest, 40% by land-use-induced productivity changes, and 7% by human-induced fires. This is a remarkable impact on the biosphere caused by just one species. We present maps quantifying human-induced changes in trophic energy flows in ecosystems that illustrate spatial patterns in the human domination of ecosystems, thus emphasizing land use as a pervasive factor of global importance. Land use transforms earth's terrestrial surface, resulting in changes in biogeochemical cycles and in the ability of ecosystems to deliver services critical to human well being. The results suggest that large-scale schemes to substitute biomass for fossil fuels should be viewed cautiously because massive additional pressures on ecosystems might result from increased biomass harvest.

Subfields: Environmental Engineering, Global and Planetary Change, Renewable Energy, Sustainability and the Environment

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/336586b4aa2b687a4ec8b5e904781b2dc2cc3962

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Environmental Engineering

1. G. P. Peters
2. S. Giljum
3. Richard Wood
4. Manfred Lenzen
5. F. Krausmann
6. Robbie M. Andrew
7. T. Wiedmann
8. Edgar G. Hertwich

In Global and Planetary Change

1. H. Haberl
2. K. Erb
3. Pete Smith
4. G. P. Peters
5. Robert Costanza
6. Paul C. Sutton
7. Robbie M. Andrew
8. Thomas Kastner

In Renewable Energy, Sustainability and the Environment

1. G. P. Peters
2. F. Krausmann
3. Manfred Lenzen
4. Klaus Hubacek
5. Richard Wood
6. K. Erb
7. S. Giljum
8. J. Martínez-Alier

Citations in the corpus

• Growth in Environmental Footprints and Environmental Impacts Embodied in Trade: Resource Efficiency Indicators from EXIOBASE3 (2018, background): “This indicator does not differentiate between the productivity in different land areas (Haberl et al. 2007).”
• Challenges and opportunities in linking carbon sequestration, livelihoods and ecosystem service provision in drylands (2012, background): “Haberl et al. (2007) estimated that human appropriation of NPP (excluding human-induced fires) for sub-Saharan Africa was 18%, though this is likely to grow as the population rises.”
• Possible target corridor for sustainable use of global material resources (2015, background): “Mankind appropriates already about a quarter of global primary biomass production [29] and biotic resources are often overexploited and thus degraded [30,31].”
• Reducing emissions from deforestation - the "combined incentives" mechanism and empirical simulations. (2009, background): “Our species has converted 27% of Earth’s terrestrial surface (MEA, 2005) into agriculture, ranching or urban areas and we currently appropriate 24–50% of Earth’s terrestrial Net Primary Productivity (Vitousek et al., 1997; Rojstaczer et al., 2001; Haberl et al., 2007).”
• 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.”
• Global patterns of ecologically unequal exchange: Implications for sustainability in the 21st century (2021, background): “…ores reserves (U.S. Geological Survey, 2015), plus the national actual terrestrial net primary productivity (NPP act ) expressing biomass reserves (Haberl et al., 2007), as independent variables (representing economic, technological, and military power, as well as natural resource endowment) and…”
• Unexpectedly large impact of forest management and grazing on global vegetation biomass (2017, positive): “Unused land was identified on the basis of previous assessments (for example, delineating unproductive land with a productivity threshold of 20 gC m − 2 yr − 1 ) 19,30 , information on permanent snow from a land cover product 34 , a thematic footprint map 35 and a map on intact forests 36 .”
• Beyond biofuels: assessing global land use for domestic consumption of biomass: a conceptual and empirical contribution to sustainable management of global resources. (2012, background): “Haberl et al. (2007) proposed human appropriation of net primary production (HANPP) as an indicator for the human domination of the eco-sphere.”
• Global change pressures on soils from land use and management (2016, background): “The fraction of NPP extracted by humans is increasing (Haberl et al., 2007).”