Analysis of Ecological Balance Issue for the Built-Up Land and Cropland Footprints in Alexandria City, Egypt During this Time-Series (2005-2019)

Abstract

At recent times, rapid urbanization growth occurs in numerous cities, thus this creates many issues, leading to local ecological degradation. So, an evaluation tool has been proposed to measure this ecological balance issue (EBI) to assess the urban sustainability of a city which is an Ecological Footprint Analysis (EFA) tool. This paper aims to measure the imbalance of consumption/production of built-up land in Alexandria city by using the EFA tool. In order to assess a holistic picture of the urban sustainability of built-up land, the researcher collected all the relevant data during this time-series (2005-2019) from the local authorities. In the accounts of ecological footprint (EF), the parameters of built-up land are set as equal to those of cropland, based on the assumption that built-up land is totally converted from cropland. However, built-up land may be derived from other types of land use, but the cropland ranks as the most productive use. So, one of the objectives of this paper is to compare between the builtup land and cropland to ascertain the extent of loss on cropland. The researcher concludes that the Ecological Footprint (EF) of built-up land is larger than the bio-capacity (BC) of built-up land, resulting in an existing ecological balance issue (ecological deficit), this can be considered as urban unsustainable pattern. Consequently, the researcher has been suggested guidelines and recommendations responding to the final results of measurements so that more decisions can be taken to move towards the urban sustainability progress by observing the local realities for Alexandria's vision of 2050.

Assessment of environmental sustainability using ecological footprint in urban ecosystems of North Western Himalayas

“…The lowest ecological deficit of 21.795 g/ha in Palampur may be explained by the low levels of anthropocentricity in the region, as well as the relatively low levels of development in the area.The ecological deficit per capita in different urban areas ranged from 0.004 to 0.027 g ha/capita and followed the following pattern: Jawali (0.028 g ha/capita) > Jawalamukhi (0.027 g ha/capita) > Dehra (0.022 g ha/capita) > Nagrota (0.020 g ha/capita) > Dharamshala (0.018 g ha/capita) > Baijnath-Paprola (0.017 g ha/capita) > Nurpur (0.016 g ha/capita) > Kangra (0.011 g ha/capita) > Palampur (0.006 g ha/capita). The results are in congruence with the findings of Kandil et al (2020) and Pandit et al (2021);the per capita ecological deficit has no characteristic pattern because of varying geographical areas and capricious amount of population which has not relatively magnified in these areas. According to the data, the expanded built-up land footprint of different urban areas exceeds the biocapacity of the environment, rendering the system unsustainable and pointing out the existence of an Ecological Deficit (ED).…”

Operating Mechanism of University Innovation and Entrepreneurship Education and Its Contribution to Regional Economy

“…This paper first calculates the contribution rate D t of university innovation and entrepreneurship education to regional economic development in the region and its subregions within the study period according to the derived contribution rate equation (11), and then calculates the contribution rate D f of higher innovation and entrepreneurship education to regional economic development in the region and its subregions within the study period according to the derived contribution rate equation (12). The results are given in Table 1.…”

“…After the reform and opening up, China began to implement the development strategy that is centered on economic construction, and as a result, its economic development showed a trend of rapid growth [1][2][3][4][5][6][7]. Now that the economic development in China has ushered in a new stage, its main driver has already changed [8][9][10][11][12][13]. The high-quality economic development has relied more on innovation and entrepreneurship and high-level innovative talents, and no longer on natural resource exploitation and low-cost human resources.…”