Global patterns in human consumption of net primary production

Imhoff, Marc L.; Bounoua, Lahouari; Ricketts, Taylor H.; Loucks, Colby; Harriss, Robert C.; Lawrence, William T.

doi:10.1038/nature02619

Cited by 616 publications

(404 citation statements)

References 17 publications

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“…We used five abiotic variables as the environmental explanatory data set that could explain biodiversity patterns: ecoregion area (obtained from WWF polygons), variation in altitude (calculated as standard deviation, HYDRO1k; Verdin 2011), temperature seasonality (measured as standard deviation*100, BIO4 from BIOCLIM, Hijmans et al 2005), net primary productivity (measured as the range, Imhoff et al 2004) and annual evapotranspiration (measured as standard deviation, Trabucco and Zomer 2009). All abiotic variables were processed using a Geographic Information System and resampled to an equal area grid of 1 km 2 .…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Spatial variation of mammal richness, functional and phylogenetic diversity in the Mexican transition zone

2017

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Spatial variation of mammal richness, functional and phylogenetic diversity in the Mexican transition zone

2017

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“…Such abnormal high consumption levels could severely affect the current composition of the ecosystem (11,12). Moreover, with an increase in per capita income, the quality of life and disposable income have increased often leading to an increase in per capita consumption of both mass and energy.…”

Section: Population Increasementioning

confidence: 99%

Exploring the Sustainability of Industrial Production and Energy Generation with a Model System

Kotecha¹,

Diwekar²,

Cabezas³

2011

Linköping Electronic Conference Proceedings

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Abstract:The importance and complexity of sustainability has been well recognized and a formal study of sustainability based on system theory approaches is imperative as many of the relationships between the various components of the system could be non-linear, intertwined, and non-intuitive. A mathematical model capable of yielding qualitative inferences can serve as an important tool for policy makers to: (1) explore various simulated important scenarios, and (2) evaluate different strategies and technologies. In this article, we consider a simplified ecological food web with an integrated macro-economic system, industrial production sector, an energy generation sector, and elements of a human society along with a rudimentary legal system. The energy sector is designed to supply energy to the other components of the system either by using a finite, non-renewable energy source or by a combination of a non-renewable source and biomass. Many of the components of the system depend directly or indirectly on the biomass used for energy production. Subsequently, this model is used to study the impact of using biomass for the production of energy on the sustainability of other components of the system under different scenarios such as population increases and per capita consumption increase.

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“…Turning to the global level we can identify the macro regions of the Earth (Imhoff et al, 2004, Sutton et al, 2012. However, statistical data for these regions is usually available only at the country level.…”

Section: Intenscoping Countries Of the World: Global Level Analysismentioning

confidence: 99%

Is the Netherlands sustainable as a global-scale inner-city? Intenscoping spatial sustainability

Kocsis¹

2014

Ecological Economics

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Is the Netherlands sustainable or not? The answer inherently involves addressing the issues of system boundaries, statistical units and a vision of sustainability. As an analytical answer we offer the Intenscope (IS), a two-dimensional graphical tool based on dimensionless percentages of triple rate ratios which overcomes several limitations of sustainability analyses. First, it is not sensitive to the size of statistical units so an area with twice the amount of resources of another, with double the population (and double the total consumption) would have the same triple ratio of population:biocapacity:consumption.Second, the IS is sensitive to anomalies which may originate either from the use of arbitrary statistical units (e.g. the boundaries of a city) or those which may indicate truly unsustainable practices. To judge spatial sustainability we use ecological footprint data from which we construct a plausible country plot based on the IS. Despite the relative nature of IS-analyses, the employed consumption:biocapacity ratio inherently refers to the absolute limit of sustainability: we cannot continually use more resources on a global scale than nature provides us with. The analysis introduces some associations of human preferences and attributions of settlement types which may help to elaborate sustainability policies based on voluntary action.

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Global patterns in human consumption of net primary production

Cited by 616 publications

References 17 publications

Spatial variation of mammal richness, functional and phylogenetic diversity in the Mexican transition zone

Spatial variation of mammal richness, functional and phylogenetic diversity in the Mexican transition zone

Exploring the Sustainability of Industrial Production and Energy Generation with a Model System

Is the Netherlands sustainable as a global-scale inner-city? Intenscoping spatial sustainability

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