Ecological Footprint - Methodology

Methodology

The ecological footprint accounting method at the national level is described in the Footprint Atlas 2010 or in greater detail in the Calculation Methodology for the National Footprint Accounts. The National Accounts Review Committee has also published a research agenda on how the method will be improved.

There have been differences in the methodology used by various ecological footprint studies. Examples include how sea area should be counted, how to account for fossil fuels, how to account for nuclear power (many studies simply consider it to have the same ecological footprint as fossil fuels), which data sources used, when average global numbers or local numbers should be used when looking at a specific area, how space for biodiversity should be included, and how imports/exports should be accounted for. However, as new footprint standards emerge, the calculation methodologies are converging.

In 2003, Jason Venetoulis, Carl Mas, Christopher Gaudet, Dahlia Chazan, and John Talberth developed Footprint 2., which offers a series of theoretical and methodological improvements to the standard footprint approach. The four primary improvements were that they included the entire surface of the Earth in biocapacity estimates, allocated space for other (i.e., non-human) species, updated the basis of equivalence factors from agricultural land to net primary productivity (NPP), and refined the carbon component of the footprint based on the latest global carbon models.