A modified method of ecological footprint calculation and its application

By Sheng Zhao, Zi-zhen Li, Wenlong Li. 2005

223 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Abstract As economic and ecological support systems become more interdependent, new disciplines are needed to “bridge the gap” between human and nature. “Emergy” created by H.T. Odum is a new method for evaluating natural capital and ecosystem services. The “ecological footprint” created by Wackernagel and Rees has been promoted as a policy and planning tool for sustainability. The aim of this paper is to show a modified form of ecological footprint calculation by combining emergy analysis with conventional ecological footprint form of calculations. Our new method starts from the energy flows of a system in calculating ecological footprint and carrying capacity. Through a study of the energy flows, and using the method of emergy analysis, the energy flows of a system are translated into corresponding biological productive units. To demonstrate the mechanics of this new method, we compared our calculations with that of an original calculation of ecological footprint of a regional case. We select Gansu province in western China, as an example for application of our study. In this case the same conclusions were drawn using both methods: that Gansu province runs an ecological deficit.

Subfields: Environmental Engineering, Management, Monitoring, Policy and Law, Water Science and Technology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/578a40a5b801efec64302a710d98e076844e7dff

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. Avik Sinha
2. Lucas Pereira
3. R. Siche
4. J. Siche
5. Feni Agostinho
6. M. Destek
7. E. Ortega
8. A. Romeiro

In Management, Monitoring, Policy and Law

1. Lucas Pereira
2. R. Siche
3. J. Siche
4. Feni Agostinho
5. M. Destek
6. Avik Sinha
7. E. Ortega
8. A. Romeiro

In Water Science and Technology

1. Lucas Pereira
2. R. Siche
3. J. Siche
4. Feni Agostinho
5. M. Destek
6. Avik Sinha
7. E. Ortega
8. A. Romeiro

Citations in the corpus

• Sustainability of nations by indices: Comparative study between environmental sustainability index, ecological footprint and the emergy performance indices (2008, result): “Research about this line was published recently (Zhao et al., 2005; Chen and Chen, 2006), but these new mixed methods maintain some deficiencies of the original methodologies.”
• Convergence of ecological footprint and emergy analysis as a sustainability indicator of countries: Peru as case study (2010, methodology): “[61], slightly modified and used by Chen and Chen [6,7] to investigate the resource consumption of the Chinese society from 1981 to 2001 and by Siche et al.”
• Renewable, non-renewable energy consumption, economic growth, trade openness and ecological footprint: Evidence from organisation for economic Co-operation and development countries (2020, methodology): “This study used 7 the methodology formulated by Zhao et al. (2005), and this particular methodology focused on 8 both renewable and non-renewable energy solutions, while computation of ecological footprint.”