Agricultural land footprint

Agricultural area occupied for production, consumption or export of an economic area in Germany and internationally [ha].

Cereal equals

Amount of plant products equivalent to the calorie equivalent of one tonne of cereals (usually wheat).

Climate footprint

Amount of greenhouse gases whose emission is associated with the production, consumption or export of goods in a country, domestic and international [greenhouse gas equivalents].

Consumption

In the context of footprints, this report simply refers to the footprint of domestic consumption. In economic terms, this means ‘total final domestic use’ (private and public consumption and investment).

Core product

End-product of bio-based material flows, the production of which requires a high proportion of the raw material of a material flow. Core products act as a proxy for a material flow and can be used to monitor sustainability aspects up to the end-of-life phase.

Fibrewood equivalent

Unit of wood consumption; denotes the equivalent volume of wood, wood fibres or wood-based fibres contained in a product in the fibre-saturated state; abbreviated: m³ (f ). This converts the various units of wood measurement into a standard measurement equivalent to one cubic metre of solid wood mass (solid cubic metre without bark, Fm o. R.).

Forest biomass footprint

Amount of primary or roundwood equivalents excluding bark used domestically and internationally for production, consumption or export of wood-based goods [m 3 (r)].

Harvested solid cubic metres

One solid cubic metre of wood is equivalent to 1 m 3 of solid wood, i. e. without gaps in the layering. One solid cubic metre harvested corresponds to one solid cubic metre minus approx. 10 % of bark loss and approx. 10 % loss during harvesting. The wood measure solid cubic metre harvested (Efm = 1 m3) is used to estimate usable roundwood.

Level of self-sufficiency

Share of domestic production in domestic consumption.

Material footprint

Amount of primary raw materials removed from the environment for production, consumption or export of a country’s goods domestically and internationally; this report focuses on the material footprint from biomass excluding wood [t].

Roundwood (=coarse wood)

Above-ground wood mass of trees with a diameter of >7 cm with bark at chest height; ‘non-coarse wood’: Trees with a diameter <7 cm with bark.

Roundwood equivalent

Unit of wood consumption that refers to the quantities of wood logged in the forest taking into account processing losses; the unit is abbreviated as m 3 (r).

Water footprint

Water withdrawal volume for the production, consumption and/or export of goods domestically and internationally [million m³ or km³]. This report focuses on water withdrawal for the irrigation of agricultural crops.

Water stress

The water stress indicator is defined as the dimensionless ratio of the volume of water withdrawal to the volume of water availability (‘withdrawal-to-availability’, wta ratio): if wta is less than 0.2, there is no water stress; if wta is between 0.2 and 0.4, this indicates medium water stress; if wta is equal to or greater than 0.4 (i. e. 40 % of the available water or more is removed), water stress is high.

Water supply

Water supply refers to water availability, i. e. the amount of water naturally available in a region or river basin. It is mainly determined by inflows and precipitation.

White sugar

Reference value for the conversion of intermediates of sugar production, such as concentrated juice or raw sugar on the standard calculation basis of one tonne of (refined) white sugar.