Investigating environmental sustainability using ecological footprint index (Case study:Abadan city, in Khouzestan province)
Subject Areas : Modeling in environment and natural resources
1 - دانشگاه آزاد اسلامی واحد ارسنجان
Keywords: Ecological footprint, Environmental sustainability, Khuzestan, Abadan,
Abstract :
Introduction: The growth and high population density in urban areas and the production of all kinds of domestic and industrial pollutants resulted many consequences on the sustainability of the environment and its biological capacity as well as the quality of human life in urban communities. Ecological footprint assessment is one of the methods of measuring sustainable development in urban societies, which is used to measure sustainability in the world. The purpose of this research is to measure the sustainability of Abadan city using the ecological footprint method. Materials and Methods: This research was carried out by using the descriptive-analytical method and by applying the ecological footprint calculation model proposed by Rees and Walkernagel in order to determine the amount of land needed by the residents of Abadan city. The data of this research was mainly quantitative and collected by two documentary and field methods. The studied community included 384 households living in Abadan city and using the statistics and data of the relevant organizations with the subject of research and national statistics and yearbooks. The cluster random sampling method was based on the ten Abadan manicipal regions. Then, the ecological footprint index of food consumption, the amount of carbon dioxide production due to transportation and heating from natural gas, the amount of water consumption, the amount of electricity consumed and the amount of produced waste were calculated. Results and Discussion: Calculations showed that the largest footprint was related to electricity consumption (4252 m2) per person and the lowest related to waste (21 m2) for each citizen. Footprint index of water 56, natural gas 450 , gasoil 3770, petrol 1484 and food 1232 square meters per citizen and the total ecological footprint was calculated 1.12 hectares . Conclusion: The results showed the region climate and the activity of oil industries cause high consumption of energy input increased in hot seasons and the traffic of diesel vehicles because of industries in Abadan increase, So the consumption of diesel fuel is more than gasoline. Although the total per capita ecological footprint of Abadan is less than the world average (1.8 hectares), but the total ecological footprint per population is 5.5% more than the urban environment's carrying capacity, and this requires optimal management of resources and matching this potential with population and resource consumption.
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