The sustainable yield of natural capital is the ecological yield that can be extracted without reducing the base of capital itself, i.e. the surplus required to maintain ecosystem services at the same or increasing level over time. This yield usually varies over time with the needs of the ecosystem to maintain itself, e.g. a forest that has recently suffered a blight or flooding or fire will require more of its own ecological yield to sustain and re-establish a mature forest. While doing so, the sustainable yield may be much less.
In forestry terms it is the largest amount of harvest activity that can occur without degrading the productivity of the stock.
For example in fisheries, the basic natural capital or virgin population, must decrease with extraction. At the same time productivity increases. Hence, sustainable yield would be within the range in which the natural capital together with its production are able to provide satisfactory yield. It may be very difficult to quantify sustainable yield, because every dynamic ecological conditions and other factors not related to harvesting induce changes and fluctuations in both, the natural capital and its productivity.
In the case of groundwater there is a safe yield of water extraction per unit time, beyond which the aquifer risks the state of overdrafting or even depletion.
Other articles related to "yield, sustainable yield":
... Maximum economic yield (MEY) - the total amount of profit that could be earned from a fishery if it were owned by one individual ... Maximum sustainable yield (MSY) - the maximum catch that can be taken from a species' stock over an indefinite period ... The maximum sustainable yield is usually higher than the optimum sustainable yield ...
... fishing mortality, Fmsy is the fishing mortality that produces the maximum sustainable yield, and Emsy is the expected level of fishing that will produce the maximum sustainable yield ... stock biomass needed to produce the maximum sustainable yield, and MSST is the minimum standing stock threshold ... MSY is the maximum sustainable yield and OY is the optimum yield of a stock ...
... The sustainable yield of natural capital is the ecological yield that can be extracted without reducing the base of capital itself, i.e ... This yield usually varies over time with the needs of the ecosystem to maintain itself, e.g ... or flooding or fire will require more of its own ecological yield to sustain and re-establish a mature forest ...
Famous quotes containing the word yield:
“The Hacker Ethic: Access to computers—and anything which might teach you something about the way the world works—should be unlimited and total.
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—Steven Levy, U.S. writer. Hackers, ch. 2, “The Hacker Ethic,” pp. 27-33, Anchor Press, Doubleday (1984)