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Ochi, Shiro
persons per ton of C-NPP). The current population was measured from CIESIN population data. The output shows that
Mekong river basin can support about 13.9 times of the current population in the basin. On the contrary, Yangzhu river
and Yellow river basin can support about 1.2 and 1.3 times respectively of the current population in the basins.
5. Conclusions and Further Studies
In this study, Satellite RS and GIS are used to estimate NPP and Population Capacity in major river basins in Asia.
Most of the input data can be down loaded through internet or access-free CD-ROM. The procedure can work to other
regions in the world in any scale from local to global, and can be applied using updated satellite data. The result shows
that Mekong and Amur River basins have the highest population carrying capacity under the above-mentioned
assumptions, while Yangzu and Yellow River basins are saturated. In the previous study about global population
carrying capacity, it was not clear how many, where and how people can survive on the land. The output is very useful
to understand the future status of the population distribution in he region and to plan the strategy for land
use/agricultural development.
There remain some problems to be solved in the procedure. Firstly, in the algorithm to estimate NPP using NDVI and
PAR, (efficiency parameter ) is set to 1.5 as a global average. Fbwever, the efficiency is considered to vary
depending on the climate condition and vegetation type. Secondly, it was assumed that per capita productivity for all
river basins in Asia can attain to the level of Yangzhu river basin in the simulation procedure. However, per capita
productivity must have unique value depending on the region specified by the climate, cultivation style etc. The
regional characteristics of per capita productivity should be investigated through further studies.
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