Virtual world: emergy, water, and engineering ecology

The authors discuss various options for using "virtual" representations in environmental research: expanding the concept of energy expended through the concept of "e m ergy" by H. Odum (through the ideas and concepts of physicist S.A. Podolinsky (1850-1891), ecologist V.V. Stanchinsky (1882-1942)], economist, Nobel laureate V.V. Leontiev (1905-1999); Odum proposed the concept of materialized energy). The authors discuss the rational use of water resources through J. Allan's "virtual water" food; with the increasing water scarcity in a number of countries due to global warming, a number of strategies have emerged to overcome it, which include saving water consumption, desalting brackish or salty seawater; another alternative is to minimize water consumption by importing water-intensive products - both agricultural and industrial; virtual water in a product of economic activity is the volume of fresh water measured at the place of production of the product; there are three types of virtual water - "green" (rain), "blue" (surface or ground water) and "gray" virtual water (polluted water), the design of ecosystems with specified properties within the framework of environmental engineering (environmental engineering methods allow translating the solution this kind of virtual tasks into a practical plane - the creation of highly productive grass mixtures, the creation of football fields resistant to trampling, the creation of mariculture farms, etc.). The authors conclude that the virtual world is becoming more and more real.