Physics and Chemistry of the Earth xxx (2017) 1e9

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Physics and Chemistry of the Earth

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The study on ecological sustainable development in Chengdu

Yifan Li a, Jinyan Zhan a, *, Fan Zhang a, Miaolin Zhang b, Dongdong Chen c
a
School of Environment, Beijing Normal University, Beijing 100875, China
b
School of Land Science and Technology, China University of Geosciences (Beijing), Beijing 100083, China
c
Faculty of Resources and Environmental Science, Hubei University, Wuhan, Hubei, 430062, China

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: Ecological footprint is one of the important methods to study ecological sustainable development, but
Received 23 May 2016 ecological footprint focuses on only the static calculation of ecological sustainable development and
Received in revised form cannot dynamically predict its development. In this study, we combine ecological footprint with system
10 February 2017
dynamics software STELLA to construct a predictable model of ecological sustainable development. We
Accepted 2 March 2017
Available online xxx
introduce rate1 and rate2 into the model, which reflects the change in per capita consumption of bio-
logical resources and energy due to the socio-economic development, and by changing the values of
them to simulate a variety of scenarios. The results show that ecological sustainable development of
Keywords:
Ecological footprint
Chengdu is in the state of ecological deficit, which is 1.43 million hm2 in 2013, and different rate1 and
STELLA rate2 will lead to different changes in the ecological deficit. When rate1 ¼ rate2 ¼ 0.1, the degree of
Ecological sustainable development ecological deficit in Chengdu is reduced from 1.43 million hm2 to 1.24 million hm2 in 2013e2018, and
System dynamics after 2018, it begins to increase, which will reach 1.32 million hm2 in 2021. And when
Chengdu rate1 ¼ rate2 ¼ 0.05, the ecological deficit of Chengdu in 2013e2021 will decrease gradually, which from
1.43 million hm2 to 1.31 million hm2. These results reflect the impact of economic development on
ecological sustainable development, and it can provide a reference for the balanced development of
economic and ecological protection, which will help decision makers to do something for ecological
sustainable development planning of Chengdu.
© 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction better method for analyzing sustainable development (Coote,

Environment protection and sustainable development are the
main hotspots at present (Deng et al., 2016). The concept of sus-
tainable development is commonly traced to the ‘Bruntland Report’
in 1987 (Harlow et al., 2013; Redclift, 2005), and since then more
and more people put their eyes on research of ecological sustain-
able development (Verba and Ivanov, 2015). In the process of
development, the city is facing a lot of risks, many scholars began to
study how to realize ecological sustainable development of the city
in order to solve these risks (Campbell, 1996; Chiesura, 2004; Deng
and Bai, 2014). Many methods have been used to study ecological
sustainable development of a city, e.g., ecological network analysis
(Zhang et al., 2010), carbon footprint (Ramaswami et al., 2012), and
energy analysis (Olaofe and Folly, 2013; Vollaro et al., 2014), which
provide a great reference for the study of ecological sustainable
development. But some experts consider ecological footprint as a
* Corresponding author.
E-mail address: zhanjinyan.bnu@gmail.com (J. Zhan).
2006; Du et al., 2006; Ferng, 2014; Li and Hou, 2011; Moffatt, 2000).
The ecological footprint is a method that measures natural
capital demand of human beings by evaluating the area of
ecological productive land which is needed to meet the con-
sumption pattern (Wackernagel et al., 1999). The ecological foot-
print was put forward by Rees (1995), which was then improved by
Wackernagel and Rees (1997). The ecological footprint reveals the
relationship between the regional supply and demand of natural
capital. It can make judgments on regional sustainable develop-
ment by comparing human demand for natural capital and nature
of renewable ability. The ecological footprint is also vividly likened
to a footprint on the earth by a giant foot which is loaded with
human and the things created by human, e.g., city and factory
(Haberl et al., 2001). When the earth cannot bear such a large
footprint, it is not sustainable and is likely to collapse (Li et al.,
2016). Having a scientific theoretical basis clear conceptual
framework (Bicknell et al., 1998) and a unified streamline index
system (Kitzes et al., 2009; Wang and Gao, 2002), the ecological
footprint has been widely accepted by many experts and scholars,

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2 Y. Li et al. / Physics and Chemistry of the Earth xxx (2017) 1e9
and now it has become a very popular determination method for
quantification of ecological sustainable development (Rees and
Wackernagel, 1996).
The traditional ecological footprint model can only calculate
ecological footprint of past time and cannot predict the future
ecological sustainable development. Many scholars have therefore
turned their attention to the predictable model of ecological foot-
print (Ferng, 2014; Kitzes and Wackernagel, 2009). For example,
they constructed ecological sustainable development forecasting
model by combining the ecological footprint with gray prediction
(Gao and Xu, 2014), virtual ecological footprint (Wei et al., 2013),
system dynamics (Jin et al., 2009), Artificial Neural Network (ANN)
and CA-Markov (Wang et al., 2014). These methods point out the
direction for dynamic prediction of ecological sustainable devel-
opment, but little attention has been given to the effects of socio-
economic development and population change. So our study aims
to use the system dynamics method to construct ecological sus-
tainable development forecasting model, which includes the socio-
economic factors.
System Dynamics (SD) is a method based on the system theory,
which is an important branch of system science and management
science (Xia, 2009). Compared with other methods (gray predic-
tion, virtual ecological footprint, ANN and CA-Markov), it can grasp
the complex and nonlinear feedback of system, and make a good
prediction (Rashedi and Hegazy, 2016). Also, it can solve the
problem of simultaneity (mutual causation) by updating all vari-
ables in small time increments with positive and negative feed-
backs and time delays structuring the interactions and control. And
the most prominent advantage of it is to deal with the problem of
high order, nonlinear, multiple feedback complex time-varying
systems. STELLA is a system software based on the system dy-
namics theory (Costanza and Voinov, 2001), and it can predict the
development of systems very well by setting different parameters
in the dynamic prediction (Wang and Zhu, 2007). The application of
STELLA software can be a good solution to the existing problems in
the current ecological footprint model, but few scholars have
combined them up to now.
Chengdu is an important central city in China, which plays an
important role in the western development strategy and “the Belt
and Road Initiatives” (Taylor, 2014), and it is of great theoretical and
practical significance to carry out the comprehensive evaluation of
ecological sustainable development capacity in Chengdu. With
Chengdu as the study area, this study combined the ecological
footprint with the STELLA software to study ecological sustainable
development. This study constructed a SD model of ecological
footprint, which regards socio-economic development and people's
living standards as impact parameter, to analyze and forecast
ecological sustainable development of Chengdu.
2. Study area and data
2.1. Study area
Chengdu is located between 102 540 E-104 530 E and 30 050 N-
31260 N, in the hinterland of the Chengdu Plain in the western part
of Sichuan Basin (Fig. 1). Chengdu is one of the most historically
important cities in China. It is the capital city of Sichuan province,
serving as a provincial political, industrial and cultural center and a
major economic center for southwest China (Qin, 2015). It has a
sub-tropical climate, with the annual average temperatures of
15e18  C, annual accumulated temperature above 10  C of
4500e5700  C, annual precipitation of about 1000 mm, and a non-
frost period of 240-300 d. The annual sunshine hour is only
1000e1600 h in Chengdu, which is one of the lowest value in China
(Zheng et al., 2010). Additionally, this region is an important
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(2017), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.pce.2017.03.002
ecological buffer zone in the upper reaches of Yangtze River Basin,
which has a certain impact on ecological balance of the Yangtze
River Basin (Peng et al., 2016).
Chengdu is a typical mega city with an area of approximately
1.21 104 km2, which has 9 districts, 6 counties, and 4 county-level
cities (Chen et al., 2016). The population of Chengdu was 11.88
million, and its GDP was 910.89 billion Yuan in 2013, which ranked
third in the sub provincial cities, second only to Guangzhou and
Shenzhen. There is complex topography, diverse natural ecological
environment and rich biological resources and mineral resources in
Chengdu. However, associated rapid increases in resource con-
sumption have caused resources inefficiencies (Zhang et al., 2014).
The conflict between economic development and environmental
protection in Chengdu has become severe (Peng et al., 2016). Thus,
it is of significant theoretical and practical interest to choose
Chengdu as the study area.
2.2. Data
Based on the traditional ecological footprint, this study added
the socio-economic development and people's living standards
data to make the model more accurate. The data used in this study
can be categorized into four parts, i.e., land use data, biological
resource consumption data, energy consumption data, population
and economic development data of Chengdu. Except for land use
data, all of these data can been found in the statistical yearbook of
Chengdu in 2006e2014. The biological resource consumption data,
energy consumption data, population data and economic devel-
opment data was shown in Table 1.
The land use data were extracted on the basis of the Landsat TM/
ETM images covering Chengdu city in 2005, 2009 and 2013, which
were downloaded from the website of United States Geological
Survey (USGS) (Table 2). In this study, the method of human-
computer interaction interpretation in ENVI software was used to
interpret these remote sensing images. The land use of Chengdu
was divided into five categories, i.e., farmland, forest land, grass-
land, water area and construction land (Fig. 2). Finally, the spatial
analysis tool and mathematical statistics tool in ArcGIS were used
to get the land use change of transition probability matrix.
In this part, it is worth noting that the original land use transfer
matrix in this study is based on the land use data of 2005e2009,
and we combined it with the land use data in 2009 to get the land
use data of 2013 in Chengdu, which has slight difference with the
real remote sensing data. It can be seen from the following table
that the error in every land use type is less than 2% (Table 3). Since
the difference of land use transfer matrix prediction is small, the
land use data of Chengdu in 2009 and 2013 can be used to get the
new transfer matrix and predict the land use data during
2013e2017 and 2017e2021.
3. Methodology
3.1. Calculation model of ecological footprint
Ecological footprint can be divided into two parts, the supply of
ecological footprint and the demand of ecological footprint. The
supply of ecological footprint also can be seen as ecological carrying
capacity, which usually refers to the maximum population that can
be carried for an organism, given a certain quantity of food, habitat,
water and other life infrastructure present (Rees, 1996; Xu et al.,
2010). And in this paper, it means the maximum area of produc-
tive land that Chengdu can provide. The demand of ecological
footprint in this paper means the productive land area needed by
the whole population in Chengdu under the certain living standard.
The supply of ecological footprint was calculated as follows.
 Y. Li et al. / Physics and Chemistry of the Earth xxx (2017) 1e9 3

Fig. 1. Location of Chengdu.

Table 1
The socio-economic and living standards data of Chengdu in 2013.a

Index Value Index Value

Per capita consumption of biological resources data Energy consumption data

Grain (kg) 73.70 Raw coal (t) 5 616 379.34
Vegetable oil (kg) 9.16 Washed coal (t) 108 231.05
Pork (kg) 30.46 Other washed coal (t) 91 716.53
Poultry (kg) 9.47 Coal products (t) 26 201.35
Milk (kg) 19.20 Coke (t) 803 173.50
Vegetable (kg) 97.43 Natural gas (million m3) 2610.17
Fruit (kg) 20.25 Gasoline (t) 33 481.92
Egg (kg) 6.29 Kerosene (t) 17 618.52
Red meat (kg) 2.53 Diesel (t) 61 564.85
Aquatic products (kg) 4.20 Fuel oil (t) 417.15
Tea (kg) 0.39 Liquefied petroleum gas (t) 401.02
Economic development data Other petroleum products (t) 89 949.32
GDP (billion Yuan) 910.89 Heat (million KJ) 2 760 147.50
Primary industry (billion Yuan) 35.32 Electricity (million KWh) 16 841.91
Secondary industry (billion Yuan) 418.15 Population data
Tertiary Industry (billion Yuan) 457.42 Total population 11 879 900.00
Rural population 4 592 800.00
Urban population 7 287 100.00
a
Note: All of these data are from the statistical yearbook of Chengdu in 2014.

Table 2
Details of Landsat TM/ETM data in this study.

Year Filename of Landsat TM/ETM images

2005 LT51290392005104BJC00 LT51300382005189BJC00 LT51300392005253BJC00

2009 LE71290392009123SGS00 LE71300382009226EDC00 LE71300392009242SGS00
2013 LE71290392013022EDC00 LE71300382013221PFS00 LE71300392013141EDC00

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4 Y. Li et al. / Physics and Chemistry of the Earth xxx (2017) 1e9

Fig. 2. Land use of Chengdu in 2005, 2009 and 2013.

Table 3
Area of prediction and interpretation in 2013.

Land use type Area of prediction (hm2) Area of interpretation (hm2) Error size (%)

Farmland 643 142.68 638 567.68 0.72

Forest land 281 003.98 284 809.83 1.34
Grass land 64 720.44 65 893.74 1.78
Water area 19 391.14 19 391.46 0.00
Construction land 203 874.16 203 469.68 0.20

area and construction land; ai is the area of ecologically productive

with land type i; ri is the corresponding equilibrium factor for all
X
n
EC ¼ ðai  ri  yi Þ (1) kinds of land; yi is the corresponding yield factor for all kinds of
i¼1 land. At the same time, 12% of the biodiversity conservation area
should be deducted when calculating the ecological footprint
where EC is the supply of ecological footprint; i is the type of supply.
productive land including farmland, forest land, grassland, water The calculation formula of the demand of ecological footprint is:

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 Y. Li et al. / Physics and Chemistry of the Earth xxx (2017) 1e9
X X cj
EF ¼ N  ef ¼ N aaj ¼ N
pj
where EF is the demand of ecological footprint, N is the number of
the population; ef is the demand of per capita ecological footprint;
aaj is the conversion area of bio production which from per capita
trade; cj is per capita consumption of all goods; pj is average pro-
duction capacity of per capita consumption of good; j is types of
consumer goods and inputs.
If EF is bigger than EC, it will show the ecological surplus, and if
EF is less than EC, the ecological deficit will appear. The regional
ecological surplus or ecological deficit reflects the utilization of
regional population on natural resources.
3.2. Model construction
The model construction of this study is mainly based on the
software of STELLA, which is made up of four modeling basic
building blocks. The first is Stock, which is the most basic building
blocks for modeling, and it is used to indicate any amount that can
be accumulated. The second is Flow, which represents the activity,
and it can change the amount of stock in the system. The third is
Converter, which contains the equations that produce the output
values for each time period, and it also receives information and
transfers it to other variables in the model frequently. Of course,
Converters are also used to store constants. And the fourth is
Connector, which looks like a line, and it is used to transmit in-
formation and adjust the flow of input. All of the building blocks are
shown as follows (Fig. 3).
In this study, we considered the population, land, resources,
economy and other factors comprehensively to build ecological
sustainable development model of Chengdu, which includes three
parts.
The first part is the population model, which is shown as follows
(Fig. 4). It is based on the population trends over the years in
Chengdu, and considering the migration and transformation of
urban and rural population, and adding the urbanization rate as the
stable factor of model, which would give us a population prediction
of Chengdu.
In this part, the total population of Chengdu in 2013 is 1.19
million, and the urbanization rate is 61.34%. According to the sta-
tistical yearbook of Chengdu in 2006e2014, the population natural
growth rate is Y ¼ 0.01248e0.00056*TIME, and the rate of urban
population transfer from rural population is
Y ¼ 0.0042*TIMEþ0.0016. In order to ensure the sustainable
development of population, we assume that if the natural growth
Fig. 3. The symbols of four basic blocks in STELLA.
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5
rate of population is smaller than 0.8%, the natural growth rate of
(2) population holds 0.8%, and when the urbanization rate is smaller
than 65%, the natural growth rate of population keeps 0.6%. This
assumption may be controversial, but in order to ensure that the
population growth rate is not unlimited increase, we have to do it.
The second part is ecological footprint supply model, which is
shown as follows (Fig. 5). And it is based on the land use data in
2009e2013. In this part, we use remote sensing to get the land use
data, and use GIS to get the transfer matrix of it. The data in transfer
matrix of land use is converted to transfer percentage, and the land
change rate was put into the model in order to get the STELLA
model of land use change in Chengdu (Zhan et al., 2010).
In this part, Tij means the percentage of land use of i line and j
column in the transfer matrix; ma, mb, mc, md, and me is the
corresponding coefficients of each land use type (GD, LD, CD, SY,
and JSYD), which is obtained by multiplying the corresponding
equilibrium factor and the corresponding yield factor; GD, LD, CD,
SY, and JSYD are farmland, forest land, grassland, water area, and
construction land, respectively. And in the final accounting of the
supply of ecological footprint, we deduct 12% of the biodiversity
conservation area.
When setting the model of biological resource consumption and
energy consumption, we considered the factors of economic
development, and we draw two rate of change (rate1 and rate2)
into the model, which reflect the change of per capita consumption
of resources brought by the social and economic development and
the improvement of people's living standards.
In this part, we assume that, with the increase of time, economic
development and people's living standards is rising, and the lifting
speed is consistent every year. Also, the upgrade for each com-
modity consumption change of speed is the same. That is the in-
crease rate of A commodity consumption and reduction rate of B
commodity consumption is consistent from the change of eco-
nomic and living standards.
On those basis, according to the positive and negative correla-
tion in consumption biological and energy with the economic
growth rate in the statistical yearbook of Chengdu in 2006e2014,
we qualitatively assume that with the economic development and
improved of living standards, the consumption of grain, vegetable
oil, pork, sugar, meat and wood is decreased, the vegetables, eggs,
beef and mutton, fresh fruit, milk and all the energy consumption is
increased on the whole. Based on the above assumptions, the
prediction model of biological resources and energy consumption
in Chengdu is constructed, and we can see it in Fig. 6. Furthermore,
YM, XJM, QTXM, MZP, JT, TRQ, QY, MY, CY, RLY, YHSYQ, QTSYZP, RL,
and DL are raw coal, washed coal, other washed coal, coal products,
coke, natural gas, gasoline, kerosene, diesel, fuel oil, liquefied pe-
troleum gas, other petroleum products, heat, and electricity,
respectively. And Di means the demand for each biological resource
or energy, Gi means the average production capacity of per capita
consumption of good.
4. Results
In the model, we assumed that rate1 ¼ rate2 ¼ 0.1 and
rate1 ¼ rate2 ¼ 0.05, we got ecological sustainable development
prediction results of Chengdu in 2013e2021 as follows (Fig. 7).
There is a big ecological deficit in Chengdu (Fig. 7), no matter
how much the rate1 and rate2 are. When the rate1 ¼ rate2 ¼ 0.1,
the ecological deficit of Chengdu in 2013e2018 is decreasing
gradually, which is from 1.43 million hm2 to 1.24 million hm2. And
when the time after 2018, the ecological deficit of it will begin to
increase. In 2021, the ecological deficit come to 1.32 million hm2.
That is, in accordance with the status of land use and the per capita
living standards to enhance the level of 10% per year in Chengdu,
6 Y. Li et al. / Physics and Chemistry of the Earth xxx (2017) 1e9

Fig. 4. STELLA model of population.

Fig. 5. STELLA model of ecological footprint supply.

the ecological deficit of Chengdu will begin to gradually increase
from 2018. Also, when the rate1 ¼ rate2 ¼ 0.05, the ecological
deficit of Chengdu in 2013e2021 is decreasing gradually, which is
from 1.43 million hm2 to 1.31 million hm2. Therefore, if the per
capita living standards to enhance the level of 5% per year in
Chengdu, the ecological deficit of it will continues to decline.
According to this trend analysis, Chengdu ecological deficit will
reach the minimum in 2022 with 1.31 million hm2, followed by a
gradual rise (Fig. 8).
According to results that every one percentage point increase in
GDP, energy consumption increased conclusions 1.46% from Liu and
Lu (2007), and on the basis of the level of economic development in
Chengdu over the years and China's economic development status
of the new normal (Yu and Zhang, 2015), we assumed that eco-
nomic growth of Chengdu is 7.00% per year. That is, the energy
consumption of Chengdu is 10.21% per year. It is very close to what
we have previously assumed that rate1 ¼ rate2 ¼ 0.1, so we can take
this situation as the prediction model of ecological sustainable
development in Chengdu.
In this model, we introduce the rate1 and rate2 innovatively,
which reflect the change of per capita consumption of biological
resources and energy brought by the social and economic

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 Y. Li et al. / Physics and Chemistry of the Earth xxx (2017) 1e9 7

Fig. 6. STELLA model of demand for biological resource and energy.

Fig. 7. The ecological deficit of Chengdu in 2013e2021.

Fig. 9. The ecological deficit of Chengdu in 2013e2021 when rate2 is different.

Fig. 8. The ecological deficit of Chengdu in 2013e2029 when rate1 ¼ rate2 ¼ 0.05.

development and the improvement of people's living standards.
And we set the rate1 ¼ 0.1 or rate2 ¼ 0.1, and analysis the sensitivity
of the rate2 or rate1, respectively (Fig. 9, Fig. 10).
Different rate2 lead to different ecological deficit of Chengdu in
2013e2021 (Fig. 9). When rate2 ¼ 0, rate2 ¼ 0.025 and rate2 ¼ 0.5,
the ecological deficit of Chengdu in 2013e2021 are both reduced,
which is from 1.43 million hm2 to 0.86 million hm2, to 0.95 million
hm2 and to 1.05 million hm2, respectively. When rate2 ¼ 0.075, the
ecological deficit of Chengdu in 2013e2021 is decrease and then
increase, which reduced from 1.43 million hm2 in 2013 to 1.16
Fig. 10. The ecological deficit of Chengdu in 2013e2021 when rate1 is different.
million hm2 in 2020, and then increased to 1.17 million hm2 in 2021.
When rate2 ¼ 0.1, the ecological deficit of Chengdu in 2013e2021 is
also decrease and then increase, which reduced from 1.43 million
hm2 in 2013 to 1.24 million hm2 in 2018, and then increased to 1.32
million hm2 in 2021. And from the trend point of view, the smaller
the rate2, the longer the duration of the ecological deficit reduction.
For example, when rate2 ¼ 0.1, the ecological deficit has been
reduced in 2013e2018, and when rate2 ¼ 0.075, the ecological

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8 Y. Li et al. / Physics and Chemistry of the Earth xxx (2017) 1e9
deficit has been reduced in 2013e2020. It means that with the
decrease of energy consumption growth rate, the ecological deficit
showed a downward trend. And the faster the reduction of energy
consumption growth rate is, the more obvious the decline in
ecological deficit are.
Different rate1 lead to different ecological deficit of Chengdu in
2013e2021 (Fig. 10). When rate1 ¼ 0, rate1 ¼ 0.025 and rate1 ¼ 0.5,
the ecological deficit of Chengdu in 2013e2021 are both increasing,
which is from 1.43 million hm2 to 2.06 million hm2, to 1.79 million
hm2 and to 1.58 million hm2, respectively. When rate1 ¼ 0.075 and
rate1 ¼ 0.1, the ecological deficit of Chengdu in 2013e2021 are
decrease and then increase, which reduced from 1.43 million hm2
in 2013 to 1.34 million hm2 and 1.24 million hm2 in 2018, and then
increased to 1.43 million hm2 and 1.32 million hm2 in 2021,
respectively. It means that with the increase of rate1, which reflects
the changes in dietary composition of residents caused by eco-
nomic growth and the improvement of living standards, the growth
rate of ecological deficit showed a downward trend after 2013, even
when the rate1 increased to a certain level, the ecological deficit
began to show a downward trend.
Additionally, Chengdu is an important city in China, and it plays
an important role in China's western development strategy and
“the Belt and Road Initiatives”. In the process of economic devel-
opment, Chengdu is facing more serious ecological problems, and
how to protect ecological sustainable development of Chengdu has
become an important research. All of these study show that
Chengdu has a deficit in ecological (Peng et al., 2016; Yin et al.,
2015). The same is true of this study. From the results of it, we
know that there is a big ecological deficit in Chengdu, which means
that the current ecological situation in Chengdu is not optimistic. In
terms of the current development model in Chengdu, regardless of
how the economic growth rate and living standards change, its
ecological deficit in a short time will be reduced, but still difficult to
completely eliminate. It is gratifying that the results reflect the
existence of Chengdu's ecological deficit may decline, which will
encourage us to continue to conduct a more in-depth study of
ecological sustainability in Chengdu.
5. Conclusion
In this study, in terms of the traditional ecological footprint
method has some shortcomings in the prediction of ecological
sustainable development. We construct ecological sustainable
development forecast model based on the system dynamics soft-
ware STELLA and the ecological footprint. The results show that
there is a large ecological deficit in Chengdu, which is 1.43 million
hm2 in 2013, and it is necessary to strengthen ecological restoration
and construction.
At the same time, we introduce the factors (rate1 and rate2) that
reflect change factors caused by economic growth and the
improvement of people's living standards in the model, and
through the simulation of different scenarios, we get that the
different rate1 and rate2 lead different ecological deficit. When the
rate1 ¼ rate2 ¼ 0.1, the degree of ecological deficit in Chengdu was
reduced from 1.43 million hm2 to 1.24 million hm2 in 2013e2018.
And after 2018, it began to increase, which is 1.32 million hm2 in
2021. And when the rate1 ¼ rate2 ¼ 0.05, the ecological deficit of
Chengdu in 2013e2021 is decreasing gradually, which is from 1.43
million hm2 to 1.31 million hm2. This result shows that we cannot
completely eliminate the ecological deficit in Chengdu, but in a
short time we can reduce it. It means that we can take some
measures to maintain ecological sustainable development of
Chengdu. Also, the results show that the model has good prediction
ability. Compared with other methods, the method adopted in this
model takes into account the influence of socio-economic factors,
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which is more objective and scientific. It can well reflect the sus-
tainable development of Chengdu in the future.
In the construction of the model and the simulation of the scene,
we know that to achieve ecological sustainable development of
Chengdu, we can take two measures. On the one hand, we can
achieve ecological sustainable development of ecological environ-
ment by reducing the speed of economic development. On the
other hand, we can reduce the amount of energy consumed which
is increased by economic development, or guide the dietary
structure of residents by any other means to reduce consumption of
biological resources. Obviously, the first method seems to have a lot
of limitations and unrealistic. So we can improve energy efficiency
to reduce energy consumption per unit of GDP. And also, we can
take measures to change the dietary structure of residents by
guiding price or other ways, which would reduce the per capita
consumption of biological resources.
Of course, this article has some shortcomings. Firstly, due to the
lack of data, the influence of industrialization is not taken into ac-
count in the selection of the factors affecting the sustainable
development of Chengdu, which may have a certain impact on
ecological sustainable development of Chengdu. Secondly, the hy-
pothesis of STELLA model for biological resources and energy de-
mand are still to be verified. Finally, and also most importantly,
there are no exact values of rate1 and rate2, which were introduced
into the model. If the exact values of them can be obtained through
research, it will be very helpful for the prediction of ecological
sustainable development model in Chengdu.
Acknowledgments
This research was supported by the research funds from state
key program of National Natural Science Foundation of China
(Grant No. 71533004).
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