Dynamic Simulation of Ecological Footprint in Response to Socio-economic Development: An Approach of Set Pair Analysis Model

Dynamic simulation of Ecological footprint (EF) is essential for evaluating human impact on earth as well as for planning for a sustainable future. In the past studies, the built models neglected the indeterminate factors affecting the EF. In this paper, a set pair analysis (SPA) dynamic model was constructed to forecast the total ecological footprint (TEF) from 2005 to 2020. Both TEF and related socio-economic factors of TEF together were dealt with in order to build SPA model and analyzed the development trends of TEF in the following 17 years. Up to 2020, the district would have been bearing accumulative TEF of 28.478 million gha, which is near 2 times than that of 2004. Although the increase rate of gross domestic product (GDP) would be restricted in a lower level during the general planning period (2005-2020), the urban eco-environmental burden could not respond to the socio-economic circumstances promptly. The adaptability of SPA in ecosystem modeling was presented based on the case study.