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Concept
Biocapacity
Summary
The biocapacity or biological capacity of an ecosystem is an estimate of its production of certain biological materials such as natural resources, and its absorption and filtering of other materials such as carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
Biocapacity is used together with ecological footprint as a method of measuring human impact on the environment. Biocapacity and ecological footprint are tools created by the Global Footprint Network, used in sustainability studies around the world.
Biocapacity is expressed in terms of global hectares per person, thus is dependent on human population. A global hectare is an adjusted unit that represents the average biological productivity of all productive hectares on Earth in a given year (because not all hectares produce the same amount of ecosystem services). Biocapacity is calculated from United Nations population and land use data, and may be reported at various regional levels, such as a city, a country, or the world as a whole.
For example, there were roughly 12.2 billion hectares of biologically productive land and water areas on this planet in 2016. Dividing by the number of people alive in that year, 7.4 billion, gives a biocapacity for the Earth of 1.6 global hectares per person. These 1.6 global hectares includes the areas for wild species that compete with people for space.
An increase in global population can result in a decrease in biocapacity. This is usually due to the fact that the Earth's resources have to be shared; therefore, there becomes little to supply the increasing demand of the increasing population. Currently, this issue can be resolved by outsourcing. However, resources will run out due to the increasing demands and as a result a collapse of an ecosystem can be the consequence of such actions. When the ecological footprint becomes greater than the biocapacity of the population, a biocapacity deficit is suspected.
'Global biocapacity' is a term sometimes used to describe the total capacity of an ecosystem to support various continuous activity and changes.
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