Topic 10 - Demography Flashcards
What is the definition of “living at your means”?
Living at or below population carrying capacity
What continents are responsible for population growth simply numerically?
Asia and Africa
What is the general trend of the body size and abundance graph?
Smaller bodies are correlated with higher numbers of
How does human population density compare to the body size and abundance graph?
Humans have a higher than expected population density for our body size by comparison
Why has agricultural productivity increased even though we still have the same land amount to grow on?
- GMO
- Mechanism
- Fertilization
- Pesticide use
What two variables can be used to predict population sizes?
Birth rate/ death rate
What infectious diseases were main sources of mortality before the 1900s?
Tuberculosis, pneumonia
What is the human trend in death rates and birth rates currently? What is this stage called?
Mortality is going down
Birth rates are going down
This is currently called the demographic transition.
What is stage two of the demographic transition model?
The urbanizing/industrialising stage that begins to lead to lower mortality.
What stage of the demographic transition has a high increase in population?
Stage 2 and to a lesser extent stage 3
What statistics are associated with live birth rates and GDP?
They are inversely related. Economic prosperity leads to lower birth rates.
How can a perfectly equitable society be graphed?
1:1 ratio between cumulative % of population and cumulative % of income
What is the Lorenz curve?
It’s a graph of a straight perfectly equal society along with an actual bowed curve of the read relationship.
What is the Gini coefficient?
The amount of deviation between a perfect equality and equality the actual equality value on the Lorenz curve.
What is access to female secondary school percentage correlated with?
Lower fertility rates
Define Ecological Footprint
The area of productive land required to support each person
What is the conceptual environmental impact equation?
I (impact) = P(population size)A(affluence)T(Technology)
What are the three ways environmental scarcity can arise?
- Demand induced scarcity from population growth
- Supply induced scarcity is the degradation of resources
- Structural Scarcity is the unequal distribution of resources
What does the ecological footprint analysis tell us?
Whether a place is in an ecological deficit or reserve
How much wilderness has been modified for human use? How much potential agricultural land is in use?
83% of wilderness, 98% of agricultural land
What does Wilson suggest the carrying capacity of humans is?
10bil with major lifestyle modifications
Define biocapacity
Biocapacity refers to the capacity of a given biologically productive area to generate an on-going supply of renewable resources and to absorb its spillover wastes.
What can we say about carrying capacities of other species on earth since 1970?
They have declined at very high rates (about 75%)
What is the biggest forcer of climate change (radiative forcing)?
Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide
What is the important characteristic of an ice cap?
It stays year-round
What does the range expansion bar graph represent?
It represents the range expansion of a species correlated with climate change
Why is human population increasing so quickly?
There is a decline in mortality rates with no decline in birth rates
