engleski

Overview of water resource based human carrying capacity assessment models

Human carrying capacity is defined as the maximum human population size which the environment can sustain indefinitely, given its resources. It is a threshold value which can be used as a measure of sustainability of a certain ecosystem. Water resources are a crucial element of any given ecosystem, as their availability precedes all other activities in the ecosystem. Unsustainable management of Earth’s water resources has already caused environmental degradation and even destruction of certain local ecosystems. In order to prevent such events, it is necessary to define a boundary such as the water resource based human carrying capacity which will evaluate if the observed system has the ability to sustain human activities indefinitely. It is a difficult task, as it requires creation of a model which has to accurately evaluate the quantity, quality and availability of water resources, human water consumption and level of degradation of available resources caused by human activities. This paper contains an overview of most recent models created with the purpose of assessing the water resource based human carrying capacity.

water resources ; human carrying capacity ; sustainability ; carrying capacity assessment model

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