Land consumption

Land consumption as part of human resource consumption is the conversion of land with healthy soil and intact habitats into areas for industrial agriculture, traffic (road building) and especially urban human settlements. More formally, the EEA^[1] has identified three land consuming activities:

1. The expansion of
   built-up area
   which can be directly measured;
2. the absolute extent of land that is subject to exploitation by agriculture, forestry or other economic activities; and
3. the over-intensive exploitation of land that is used for agriculture and forestry.

In all of those respects, land consumption is equivalent to typical

Building construction in Olsztyn

, Poland

Road construction in Olsztyn

, Poland

Since often aforementioned conversion activities are virtually irreversible, the term land loss is also used. From 1990 to 2000, 1.4 million hectares (3.5×10^⁶ acres) of open space were consumed in the U.S.^[2] In Germany, land is being consumed at a rate of more than 70 hectares (170 acres) every day (~250 thousand hectares (620,000 acres) per 10 years).^[3] In European Union, land take is estimated approximately about to 1.2 million hectares in 21 EU countries over the period 1990–2006.^[4]

ecosystem services

— McDonald et al.^[2]

Reducing global land loss, which progresses at an alarming rate, is vital since the land footprint, the area required both domestically and abroad to produce the goods and services consumed by a country or region, can be much larger than the land actually used or even available in the country itself.^[3][5]

While

The major effects of land conversion for economic growth are:

• Land degradation
• Habitat loss
  – built-up areas support only particularly adapted species
• top soil by civilization waste and general pollution
• soil life
  is eradicated
• Impervious surfaces – asphalt and concrete seal off the soil from the atmosphere and disrupt natural water and biogeochemical cycles

See also

Land conversion in Wörrstadt

, Germany