China News Service, Beijing, December 10 (Reporter Sun Zifa) The world-renowned academic journal "Nature" recently published an environmental science research paper that pointed out that 2020 may mark a turning point for man-made mass to exceed living biomass.

　　The paper stated that in the past 100 years, the mass of man-made objects such as buildings, roads, and machines has doubled every 20 years.

The latest research results remind people that the human influence on the earth is increasing.

　　Since the first agricultural revolution, humans have reduced plant biomass from about 2 trillion tons (2 trillion tons) to about 1 trillion tons through land use changes such as agriculture and logging.

The continuous production and accumulation of man-made objects (called man-made mass) has also changed the balance between living biomass and man-made mass.

　　The corresponding author of the paper, Ron Milo of the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel, and his colleagues estimated the changes in global biomass and man-made mass from 1900 to the present.

Their research showed that at the beginning of the 20th century, the mass of man-made objects was equivalent to about 3% of the total biomass; today, the man-made mass has exceeded the total global biomass, and today's total global biomass is around 1.1 megatons.

During this period of time, the total biomass has declined slightly, while the man-made mass has increased rapidly, and is now being continuously produced at a rate of more than 30 billion tons per year.

This means that for everyone on the planet, artificial objects that exceed their weight are produced every week.

　　Most of the man-made quality comes from buildings and roads, including plastics and machines.

This type of quality composition change is related to specific construction trends, such as the transition from brick to concrete in building materials in the mid-1950s and the use of asphalt for paving in the 1960s.

In addition, changes in overall man-made quality are also related to major events, such as the continuous increase in various constructions after World War II.

　　The author of the paper pointed out that the specific time when the man-made mass exceeds the living biomass depends on the definition, so there may be some fluctuations in the estimation results.

Their research uses dry weight (excluding water) estimates, but they believe that even if wet weight estimates or other definitions of quality categories are used, the transition may still occur in the past, present, or future ten years.

If following current trends, man-made mass is expected to exceed 3 megatons in 2040.

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