Land use changes and trends in Human Appropriation of Above Ground Net Primary Production (HANPP) in India (1961–98)

Land use change has the potential to influence energy flows, standing crop and biomass turnover at a variety of scales. To understand and quantify the impact of land use change on natural systems, interdisciplinary approaches and concepts linking biophysical and socioeconomic factors are needed. One such approach for analysing the socioeconomic energy flows from land use changes is Human Appropriated Net Primary Production (HANPP). HANPP is defined as the difference between the net primary production of potential vegetation and the actual net primary production remaining in vegetation after harvest. In this study, we used HANPP to quantify the energy flows consequent upon land use/land cover change from 1961 to 1998 in India. Data from the Food and Agricultural Organization Statistics (FAOSTAT) covering land use/land cover estimates, crop production, harvest and fertilizer use data have been used to analyse the trends in HANPP. Land use changes between 1961 and 1998 indicate a small increase in agricultural areas from 58.2% to 60.8% and in forest and woodland areas from 19.0% to 23.2%. Actual above ground net primary production of vegetation increased from 1280.58 to 1818.23 Tg, an increase of approximately 1.4 times over 37 years. Although population increased exponentially, human appropriation of photosynthetic products did not rise as much due to increases in forest cover and agricultural production. Although the HANPP concept is a useful approach to analyse the trends in photosynthetic products brought about by land use changes and harvesting, more robust indicators are needed to understand the impacts associated with these changes. We discuss the relevance of the HANPP analysis results by focusing on land use/land cover change and exploring the inter-linkages between energy flows and environment.     

Using embodied HANPP to analyze teleconnections in the global land system: Conceptual considerations

Geografisk Tidsskrift—Danish Journal of Geography 109(2):119–130, 2009

In our rapidly globalizing world economy activities in one region have increasingly important effects on ecological, economic or social processes elsewhere, an effect which we here denote as ‘teleconnections’ between different regions. Biomass trade, one of the causes behind such teleconnections, is currently growing exponentially. Integrated analyses of changes in the global land system are high on the agenda of sustainability science, but a methodological framework for a consistent allocation of environmental burdens related to the consumption and production of biomass between regions has not been put forth to date. The concept of the ‘embodied human appropriation of net primary production’ (abbreviated ‘embodied HANPP’ or ‘eHANPP’) allows for the assessment of the ‘upstream’ effects on ecosystem energetics associated with a particular level of biomass consumption or with a given biomass-based product. This concept is based on HANPP and its two components: (1) productivity changes resulting from land conversion (ΔNPP_LC), and (2) harvest of biomass in ecosystems (NPP_h). HANPP, defined as the sum of ΔANPP_LC and NPP_h in any given territory, is indicative of the intensity with which humans use the land for their purposes. eHANPP is defined as the NPP appropriated in the course of biomass production, encompassing losses along the production chain as well as productivity changes induced through land conversion or harvest. By making the pressure exerted on ecosystems associated with imports and exports visible, eHANPP allows for the analysis of teleconnections between producing and consuming regions. This article puts forward the eHANPP concept, illustrates its utility for integrated socioecological land-change research based on top-down data on global HANPP and biomass consumption, and discusses the possibilities and challenges related to its quantification in bottom-up approaches.     

The effect of industrialization and globalization on domestic land-use: A global resource footprint perspective

Land-use activities are increasingly globalized and industrialized. While this contributes to a reduction of pressure on domestic ecosystems in some regions, spillover effects from these processes represent potential obstacles for global sustainable land-use. This contribution scrutinizes the complex global resource nexus of national land-use intensity, international trade of biomass goods, and resource footprints in land-use systems. Via a systematic account of the global human appropriation of net primary production (HANPP) and input–output modelling, we demonstrate that with growing income countries reduce their reliance on local renewable resources, while simultaneously consuming more biomass goods produced in other countries requiring higher energy and material inputs. The characteristic 'outsourcing' country appropriates 43% of its domestic net primary production, but net-imports a similar amount (64 gigajoules per capita and year) from other countries and requires energy (11 GJ/cap/yr) and material (~400 kg/cap/yr) inputs four to five times higher as the majority of the global population to sustain domestic land-use intensification. This growing societal disconnect from domestic ecological productivity enables a domestic conservation of ecosystems while satisfying growing demand. However, it does not imply a global decoupling of biomass consumption from resource and land requirements.     

净初级生产力的人类占用研究进展

人类活动对生态系统的影响和改变已达到前所未有的程度,如何量化人类活动对生态系统的影响成为了生态学和地理学研究中的热点问题。净初级生产力的人类占用(HANPP)是量化人类活动对生态系统能量流的影响程度的指标。目前HANPP研究开始从理论和方法的讨论及案例研究,转向作为指标应用到生态学和地理学研究的诸多领域,其重要性日益凸显。因此,论文详细介绍了HANPP的概念和估算方法;综述了其主要研究进展;讨论了HANPP的优劣及其适用范围,并着重展望了其与生态系统结构、功能、服务、生物多样性、可持续发展和人类福祉等方面有关的未来具体研究方向和科学问题,以及如何运用其探讨人类活动对生态系统的影响机制。期望启发更多与HANPP有关的研究,推动人类活动对生态系统的影响研究向定量化、系统化及多学科交叉的方向发展。     

Exploring the effects of drastic institutional and socio-economic changes on land system dynamics in Germany between 1883 and 2007

Long-term studies of land system change can help providing insights into the relative importance of underlying drivers of change. Here, we analyze land system change in Germany for the period 1883–2007 to trace the effect of drastic socio-economic and institutional changes on land system dynamics. Germany is an especially interesting case study due to fundamentally changing economic and institutional conditions: the two World Wars, the separation into East and West Germany, the accession to the European Union, and Germany's reunification. We employed the Human Appropriation of Net Primary Production (HANPP) framework to comprehensively study long-term land system dynamics in the context of these events. HANPP quantifies biomass harvests and land-use-related changes in ecosystem productivity. By comparing these flows to the potential productivity of ecosystems, HANPP allows to consistently assess land cover changes as well as changes in land use intensity. Our results show that biomass harvest steadily increased while productivity losses declined from 1883 to 2007, leading to a decline in HANPP from around 75%–65% of the potential productivity. At the same time, decreasing agricultural areas allowed for forest regrowth. Overall, land system change in Germany was surprisingly gradual, indicating high resilience to the drastic socio-economic and institutional shifts that occurred during the last 125 years. We found strikingly similar land system trajectories in East and West Germany during the time of separation (1945–1989), despite the contrasting institutional settings and economic paradigms. Conversely, the German reunification sparked a fundamental and rapid shift in former East Germany's land system, leading to altered levels of production, land use intensity and land use efficiency. Gradual and continuous land use intensification, a result of industrialization and economic optimization of land use, was the dominant trend throughout the observed period, apparently overruling socio-economic framework conditions and land use policies.