Study On The Principle Of Water Resources Ecological Footprint And Application In Jiangsu Province

The Ecological Footprint (EF) offers a cheap and rapid natural capital appraisal for nations with which human demands can be compared with nature's available supply for human use. The ecological footprint is an accounting tool that can aggregate ecological consumption in an ecologically meaningful way. It gives us, therefore, a realistic picture of where we are in ecological terms. But unfortunately, it doesn't incorporate freshwater use into Ecological Footprint by Wackernagel, that's a great limitation on the assessment for water resources sustainable development.After analyzed the freshwater's characteristics, based on Wackernaglel's EF model, the seventh account is studied, defined and summarized, the three crucial parameters including Global Average Yield for freshwater, Yield Factor for freshwater, Equivalence Factor for freshwater are confirmed, calculated. At the same time, the calculation methods for freshwater also are defined, the freshwater account is combined to Wackemagel's EF model. After that, the freshwater EF is used to assess the sustainable development of water resources on Jiangsu Province from 1998 to 2003, the betterment EF model is used to assess the sustainable development condition on Jiangsu Province from 1990 to 2003.The results show that the seventh account for water resources is reasonable, which proves the freshwater EF model can be used to assess the sustainable development of water resources, and can do well in the betterment EF model.