Lecture 2 Flashcards
Land Use
Land use is the way in which, and the purposes for which, human beings employ the land and its resources. (ex. farming, urban, lumber)
Land Cover
Land cover describes the physical state of the land surface (ex. cropland, mountains, forests)
Land Change
- Land cover changes are not always bad.
2. Land cover change is a natural process.
Arable Land
Areas which are cultivated for crops that are replanted after each harvest.
Land under permanent crops
Land under crops that do not need to be replanted after each harvest.
Livestock
Domesticated animals. Land cover/use associated with livestock production and maintenance are…
rangeland and meadows and pastures.
Rangeland
Land use of livestock production and constitutes areas that provide forage for free ranging livestock and wild animals.
Meadows and pastures
Land used permanently for herbaceous forage crops, either cultivated or growing wild.
Forests
Land under natural or planted stands of trees, whether productive or not, and includes land from which forests have been cleared but that will be reforested in the foreseeable future.
Settlements
Land used for human habitation. Otherwise known as “urban” or “built-up land”
Malthus theory of human population growth
Human population will increase in time geometrically while food supplies will increase linearly. Eventually the population will outstrip supplies and major famine will result. This theory is wrong.
Demographic Transition
Known as the “pig-in-the-python” graph. Initially the birth rate and the death rate are very high. As more people move from country to urban, the death rate decreases. Eventually the birth rate increases while maintaining a lower death rate. This results in rapid population expansion. Eventually the birth rate and the death rate are low.
Fertility Rate
To maintain a stable population requires a fertility rate of 2.1. Fertility rate is the number of the children that the average woman will have in her lifetime if she lives to the end of her child bearing years.
