Energy Choices Survey: Twin Cities Household Ecosystem Project

We designed our methods to estimate carbon, nitrogen, and phosphorus fluxes through individual households, and to address two primary questions: 1. How are these fluxes distributed across households? 2. What biophysical and socioeconomic factors contribute to differences in these fluxes across households? Our hybrid approach combines: 1. A mailed survey 2. Energy provider records 3. On-the-ground landscape measurements 4. A computational tool (the Household Flux Calculator) 4. Parcel data (interpreted using GIS) The resulting dataset includes information on biophysical and socioeconomic variables that potentially influence household-level fluxes of elements. Using this method to study element fluxes at the household level allows us to explicitly link consumption choices and element fluxes.