Incorporating carbon sink of harvested wood products into ecological footprint accounting: model and case study

Abstract

Ecological footprint (EF) accounting system is widely used in assessing environmental sustainability at various spatial scales. To improve the EF performance, a new EF calculation framework was established in this study, in which HWP is considered as carbon sinks and the model was then applied to the Yangtze River basin of China. Results showed that (1) carbon sink in the basin is about 2.99 Tg per year and it varies substantially across subbasins, which has a nonlinear relationship with net primary productivity; (2) available biocapacity calculated in the whole basin increases from 0.5068 to 0.5759 national ha (nha) per capita when incorporating the carbon sinks. In a few subbasins, the added biocapacity is even larger than the biocapacity estimated from the conventional approach; (3) the EF of the basin is 5.598 nha per capita and it is much larger than its biological carrying capacity (BC), indicating that ecological deficit is ubiquitous across the basin. If carbon sinks are considered, the ecological deficit would decrease by 3.2-14.3% for different regions in the basin. It is necessary to incorporate HWP and other potential terrestrial carbon sinks in the EF accounting, and more efforts are needed in improving carbon sink accuracy.

The Globalization and Ecological Footprint in European Countries: Correlation or Causation?

“…Carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions have been widely used as a measure to assess environmental degradation, which is primarily caused by human activities and poses a significant threat to the natural ecosystem. (Gao et al, 2020). Primarily, their analysis centers on the examination of the association between economic growth and CO2 emissions, employing the Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) hypothesis as a foundational framework.…”

Ecological Security Assessment Based on Remote Sensing and Landscape Ecology Model

“…In the past decades, more attentions have been given to ecological security assessment, and a variety of methods have been developed to evaluate ecological security, such as ecological footprint [7,8], PSR models [9][10][11], and landscape ecology models [12]; for example, Sun et al [13] used the PSR model combined methods of AHP and FCE to assess coastal wetland ecosystem health. Yang et al [8] further improved the ecological footprint method to evaluate ecological security, and Peng et al [14] took Liaoyuan City as a research case to discuss the possible ecological risks of landscapes at the county scale and the resulting ecological losses.…”