Ecological Foot Prints, A New Approach for Measuring the Environmental Impacts (Concept, Application and its Measurement)

Increasing growth of population in the recent years and consequently increasing and changing consumption patterns has increased the pressure on natural environment and its resources.
Since, renewing of some of these resources takes hundreds of years and some are also non-renewable, continuing this process declines the natural environment to supply the population needs and will have a descending trend with passing the time. On the other hand, all the consumption needs of settlement centers are not compatible with the existing ecological power in them, for this reason, for supplying these needs, supporting region is required. With respect to the concept of sustainable development, limited capacity of land resources and also basic needs of the population, determining the amount of using and extent of supporting lands required for optimum planning with foresight approach seems necessary. Here, recognition and analysis of ecological foot print concept and its measurement methods as tools for measuring the stability of human activities has a great importance.
The aim of this research would be identifying the concepts, measuring method, application and ultimately analysis and evaluation of ecological foot prints.
Method of gathering information would be as documentary and through using articles and researches conducted in different countries. The findings indicate that despite the limitations and difficulties of calculating ecological foot print and estimation of supporting lands, this method can be an appropriate frame work for measuring and evaluating the environmental impacts along with sustainable development.