Ecological Footprint Summary

Through out the Ecological Footprint Web Activity you discover what an Ecological Footprint is as well as al the factors that come with it. First, an ecological footprint is the measure of biologically productive land and water (biocapacity) needed to provide people in a region with indefinite supply of renewable resources as well as to absorb recycle wastes and pollution. I was able to explore Ecological footprints of different parts of the world. In the United States, it takes about a year and a half to generate! Looking at the picture to the right, we can also see two possible scenarios for the year 2050.

During this activity I was also able to look at the trends of biocapacity and the ecological footprint over several years in different regions. Since 1961, the biocapacity has decreased. From this we can infer that we consume way more then we produce.

To get an even greater understanding of the ecological footprint I was able to calculate my own ecological footprint. My ecological footprint according to the number of earths was 4.6. It was surprising and interesting to see because I was able to see how many resources I actually use. My use of services was 44%, food resources was 19%, shelter was 8%, mobility was 17% and goods was 13%.

Once I received this information I went back and changed the mobility, if I were to use the bus more instead of driving a car the amount of earths drops to 4.3 and that is only a slight change. I found this very interesting because small changed can really make a change in how long it takes to renew these resources.

Overall throughout this activity I was able to get a deeper understanding of what the ecological footprint is!