Title:
[Dynamics and environmental load of food carbon consumption during urbanization: a case study of Xiamen City, China].

Abstract:
With the rapid urbanization, city plays a more and more significant role in the carbon cycle of urban ecosystem. The contribution of household food carbon consumption to urban carbon cycle has become increasingly important, and has been the hot issues of the urban carbon cycle study. We analyzed the dynamics of the food carbon consumption in Xiamen City from 1988 to 2010, evaluated and forecasted the trends of food carbon consumption and its environmental load. The results showed that, from 1988 to 2010, per capita food consumption and per capita food carbon consumption declined by 6% and 25%, respectively. However, due to the rapid growth of population, the total food consumption and total food carbon consumption increased by 116% and 70%, respectively. The rising of total food carbon consumption led to the increasing environmental load of food carbon. The environmental load of food carbon increased from 98 800 t to 166 200 t, particularly there is a dramatic increase of carbon input into soil in recent years. From 2011 to 2024, total food carbon consumption and environmental load will continue to rise and then decline in 2025. Per capita food carbon consumption will decline continuously from 2011. The analysis of household food consumption showed that per household food carbon consumption was affected by household income, food cost and household persons. High food carbon consumption household usually had in average three persons eating at home, spent in average 3 125 yuan x month(-1) on food, the per household food carbon consumption was 1 134.91 kg,and the per capita food carbon consumption was 378.30 kg. Per capita food carbon consumption of high-consumption family was 4.84 times higher than that of low-consumption family.