In 2017, American consumers/residents on average used or “consumed” 0.356 acre of developed land per capita, or a little over one-third of an acre per person.  This 0.356-acre/resident metric does not include relatively unpopulated rural lands – farmlands (cropland, pasture, and rangeland), forests, reservoirs, mines – that furnish crucial raw materials and products used by every consumer/resident, namely food, fiber, fuels, water, energy, metals, and minerals. 

Nor does it include the forestlands needed to absorb each American resident’s or consumer’s carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from fossil fuel combustion to produce electricity and propel our vehicles. All of these ecologically productive lands not covered with pavement and buildings, but used indirectly by each and every U.S. resident (and all human consumers), contribute to each average American’s per capita ecological footprint. This entails a much larger amount of land, 56 times greater as much in fact, or approximately 20 global acres (8.0 global hectares) per person, according to the Global Footprint Network.