CARRYING CAPACITY & ECOLOGICAL FOOTPRINT

in #ecology7 years ago

From my understanding of what carrying capacity and ecological footprint are I could say:

CARRYING CAPACITY

In the natural population, the carrying capacity of the environment for a particular population is the number of individuals of that species that the environment can support indefinitely.

The population size may increase beyond this number, but if it does, It cannot stay at this increased size for very long.

A specie reaches its carrying capacity in a particular ecosystem when it is using up some natural resources as fast as the ecosystem can produce it.

ECOLOGICAL FOOTPRINT
It shows the extent of human demand on global ecosystems. It measures the area of biologically productive land and water needed to provide ecological resources and services – food, land on which to build, and land to absorb CO2 released from burning fossil fuels.

The amount of biologically productive area – cropland, pasture, and fisheries – available to meet humanity’s needs is the bio capacity.

For example Canada has one of the the largest available ecological capacities, it also has one of the largest ecological footprints per capita.

Counties such as UAE, United State, UK, Greece, Netherlands, Germany, Isreal, South Korea, Japan, France, all have ecological footprint which are in excess of their Available biocapacity

Australia, New Zealand, Canada and Brazil have ecological footprint less than their available biocapacity

India, Russia, and Finland has ecological footprint that is less than their available capacity.