STUDY OF ONE ASPECT OF URBAN ECOLOGY (ON THE EXAMPLE OF THE CHRISTMAS TREE ECOLOGICAL FOOTPRINT)

Abstract

The ecology of urban life includes many aspects that determine the sustainable development of urban areas and the quality of the human environment. There are many factors that determine the constant load on the ecosystem, including transport emissions, municipal sewage and solid waste, and the activities of industrial enterprises. But the ecological balance is not limited within the city limits. External impacts from powerful sources of pollution can be obtained with the flow of rivers or the transfer of air masses and, ultimately, are formed by the totality of the united ecological space of the planet. At the present stage of development, humanity, having reached the globalization of social and economic ties, “remembered” the interdependence of environmental events, taking as a measure the ecological footprint left by people’s activities. In this context, every human action should be considered as a factor of influence, which is all the more relevant in the conditions of concentrated communities formed by the urban mode of settlement. This article proposes to consider the problem of using natural resources in the organization of New Year’s holidays associated with the production, sale and disposal of natural and artificial coniferous trees. Today, about 120 million coniferous trees are cut down annually in the world for sale at Christmas markets. To this number is added the production of plastic symbols of the New Year. The article provides comparative estimates of the impact on the environment of two types of trees. A methodology for studying their ecological footprint is proposed, within which the analyzed factors are considered. The stages of setting linguistic variables, term sets, the rule base of the system using the Mamdani algorithm and modeling using the MATLAB program in the FuzzyLogic fuzzy inference system editor are described. Conclusions about approaches to the consumption of natural and artificial Christmas trees to reduce the ecological footprint are made on the basis of the resulting harm dependency models.