Monitoring the Impacts of Human Activities on Urban Ecosystems Based on the Enhanced UCCLN (EUCCLN) Model

Abstract

To have a sustainable city, human pressures on urban ecosystems should not exceed certain thresholds, which are defined by the urban carrying capacity concept. The main goal of this research was to monitor environmental pressures caused by the impacts of human activities on the ecosystem of Tehran city using spatial indicators. According to the enhanced Urban Carrying Capacity Load Number (EUCCLN) model, first, the most related indicators were collected from the open access databases, including satellite products, air quality monitoring stations, municipality statistical yearbook, and a related article. Then, the indicators were classified into air, traffic, and waste groups. Afterwards, the importance coefficients of all indicators were specified using the analytical hierarchy process. Their degree of carrying capacity tables were determined, and finally, load numbers were calculated. The results showed that 100%, 4.55%, and 40.91% of all districts had very high-to-critical degrees in terms of air, traffic, and waste indicators, respectively. The final human-induced pressure degrees were very high-to-critical in Districts 1, 3, 6, 7, 8, 12, and 14 (31.82% out of 22 districts) and high-to-very high in the rest of them. Therefore, the overall pressure in all 22 districts of Tehran had reached or exceeded its maximum threshold degree.