Phosphorus Flow Patterns In The Residents' Consumption System Of China

With decades of rapid economic growth,people's living standards have been improving constantly.It has caused the increasing of residents' consumption and the changing of consumption structure,especially for the food consumption system,which has changed from vegetable food to animal food.Phosphorus,as an essential element of the growth and development of life,exists in the different systems such as crop farming,livestock and poultry farming,industry and household consumption,and be changing with the production,consumption and discharging of different materials.Therefore,a series of production and consumption activities derived from economic growth and urban development have been the driving force of the phosphorus flow in the socioeconomic system.To meet their own demand,people exploited rock phosphate and applied fertilizer excessively,which has caused the serious resources and environment crisis.Furthermore,due to the regional disparity,residents' activities of phosphorus have appeared significant spatial heterogeneity.Hence,it is significance for the optimization and management of phosphorus flow to analyze the phosphorus flow patterns in resident's consumption system comprehensively.From the perspective of material metabolism,we established the phosphorus flow analysis framework and its accounting model.Based on this accounting model,we carried out quantitative analysis of phosphorus flows in the system of residents' consumption in China,1949-2012 and 31 provinces,2012 and 2000.The results were shown as follows:(1)Since the 1949,the quantity of phosphorus input residents' consumption system was increasing wavelike from 0.49 million tons in 1949 to 0.88 million tons in 2012.For the urban residents' consumption system,the quantity was rising continuously.In contrast,because of the Great Leap Forward Movement and the Great Chinese Famine,the quantity input rural residents' consumption has experienced the first decrease from 1959 to 1961 and was reducing gradually after 2000.From the point of regional differences,the quantity of phosphorus input residents' consumption system presented progressive decrease from the eastern,central to western region basically,and the phosphorus consumption per capita was progressive increasing conversely.(2)The tendency of the phosphorus quantity output residents' consumption system was basically similar to the quantity input.Over the past years,the output of human fecaluria was the most important part of phosphorus output,and the proportion was 50%-60%.During the early time,domestic sewage was the smallest output of the system,only 3%.After that the quantity of phosphorus output was increasing,and the proportion has increased to 19%in 2012.The quantity of phosphorus output residents'consumption system presented progressive decrease from the eastern,central to western region on the national level.For the eastern region such as Beijing,Shanghai and Guangdong,the phosphorus quantity of human fecaluria had the relatively small account,which was replaced by domestic sewage.For the western region,the consequence was on the contrary.Different waste disposal methods should be taken into account for different regions.(3)Until the 1980s,the phosphorus output residents' consumption system was reused mostly in the agriculture and livestock farming system,which accounted for approximately 60%of the total output of phosphorus and the rest was discharged directly into the environment.After that the phosphorus cycling ratio was reducing and the quantity of phosphorus discharged into water was rising continuously,which caused serious water environment problems.The quantity of phosphorus discharged into environment presented progressive decrease from the eastern,central to western region on the national level.For the management of phosphorus in water pollution,Guangdong,Sichuan and Henan of which the discharged quantity were larger should be focused on.On account of the different waste disposal rate,the proportion of discharged phosphorus and phosphorus cycling ratio presented progressive increase from the eastern,central to western region.(4)Per capita GDP,urbanization rate,urban/rural Engel coefficient and urban/rural residents' consumption level had high correlations with the phosphorus consumption in residents' consumption system.For the urban residents' consumption system,urbanization rate and urban Engel coefficient were the major influencing factors.For the rural residents' consumption system,urbanization rate,per capita GDP and rural residents' consumption level were the major factors.The water-resource endowments and climate of different regions caused the space diversity of phosphorus output forms.Urbanization rate and rural residents' consumption level had significant negative correlations with phosphorus cycling ratio.We provided some suggestions for reducing phosphorus emissions.Developing organic agriculture so as to raise the phosphorus cycling ratio,especially for the regions of economic underdevelopment and low-level urbanization rate,such as Tibet,Ningxia,Xinjiang and so on.For the regions with developed economy and higher urbanization rate such as Guangdong,Shanghai and Beijing,the construction of waste disposal facilities should be improved so as to reduce the risk of domestic sewage and garbage discharged directly into environment.