Research Review of the Ecological Carrying Capacity

Abstract

The ecological carrying capacity is of vital importance for the economic development and the scale of resource exploitation in one country or region. This paper more comprehensively summarizes and concludes the basic contents and evaluation methods of ecological carrying capacity with regard to the related studies of the domestic and foreign scholars. 1. The origin of carrying capacity From the industrial revolution in the latter half of 18 th century, the material civilization of human beings is developed highly in the process of exploiting and making use of natural resources. At the same time of immersing in the huge material achievement brought by the industrial civilization, the human beings are suffering a serious of important problems: the pollution of air and water, soil loss, desertification becoming larger, climate changing abnormally, biological species decreasing quickly, the shortage or exhaustion of resources, the destruction of ozone layer, population increasing sharply and so on. The traditional economic development mode and limited resource environment capacity require the resources exploitation to be controlled in the ecological carrying capacity, in that the sustainable development of social economy can be achieved by the resources being used continuously. In 1921, Park and Burgess proposed the concept of carrying capacity and held the opinion that the carrying capacity of population in one region can be determined according to food resources in the region; with the problems of land degradation, environmental pollution, resources exhaustion and population expansion, the biologists and ecologists develop the concept of carrying capacity and apply it to human ecology etc, and the concepts of carrying capacity about soil resources, water resources, forest resources and environment are proposed one after the other. To sum up, from the concept of carrying capacity being proposed to now, it has changed profoundly in the form and significance. The evolvement and development of the concept of carrying capacity is displayed in table 1. 2. The concept and connotation of ecological carrying capacity Another problem is ecological destruction that cannot be divided from resources shortage and environment pollution. Ecological destruction may damage the integrality of ecosystem, in that the human beings and different kinds of animals which survive in the ecological system may face the survival crisis. Therefore, many scholars and experts proposed to preserve the integrality of ecosystem and control the activities of human beings in the capacity of ecosystem, in that ecological carrying capacity arises. The referred foreign research reports define the ecological carrying capacity mostly in the view of species ecology. (Bailey J.A. etc, 1984) divided the carrying capacity into "economic carrying capacity" and "ecological carrying capacity", among them the ecological capacity belongs to the category of wildlife management which refers to the equilibrium of species and environment without the interference from hunting and so on, that means the ecological carrying capacity are decided by the biological resources in the condition that hunting does not exist or the normal hunting has little influence on the number of species; (A.C.smaal, T.c.Prins et, 1998) consider that the ecological carrying capacity refers the maximum of species which are supported by the special ecosystem in the special time; (Andrew, T. Hudak (1999) think that the ecological carrying capacity refers the maximum of species which are supplied by the vegetations in the special time. It can be concluded the connotation of the ecological carrying capacity, which refers the maximum of species held by the ecosystem in the existing condition. Chinese researchers did research on the ecological carrying capacity in 1990s, which is still in the starting stage. (Jiaji, Wang, 2000) considered that the ecological carrying capacity is the objective reflection of the adjusting ability of natural system; (Jixi, Gao, 2001) considered that the ecological carrying capacity is the capacity of self-maintenance and self-regulation, the accommodating ability of resources and environment subsystem and the strength of social and economic activities and the number of people living normally sustained by the