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

摘要

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 built-up 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.