Application and Discussion in Small Scale of China in Research of Ecological Footprint - Take the EF of Lanzhou University (Graduate School) in 2003 as An Example

摘要

The Ecological footprint (EF) which can measure the impact of human's consumption on ecosystem, is a useful and powerful indicator comparing the regional development sustainability in the world. There are two methods to calculate ecological footprint: the compound approach and the component-based approach. In China the compound approach has been applied to calculate EF in the scale of nation and region, but component-based approach which is fit for the calculation of EF on middle or small level, hasn't been applied to any district in China. The article introduced the model of the component approach by comparing the differences with compound approach and component-based approach, and took Lanzhou University (Graduate School) as case, calculated the ecological footprint of Lanzhou University (Graduate School) in 2003 with the conjunction of the two methods. The results showed that the ecological footprint of Lanzhou University (Graduate School) in 2003 was 13946.07 ha and 2.88 ha per cap. There were 7 parts composed of EF in 2003: food, housing, transportation, energy, goods, services, waste. Then analyzed the results and drew some conclusions. At last, the paper discussed the reason of the differences in the ecological footprint of other country, region, and Lanzhou University. By the calculation of demonstration discovered the shortcomings of the method of EF. The purpose of this paper is to introduce the component-based approach and indicate the problems need to solve to apply to the research of EF in small scale of China.