Topic 10 - Demography

Question 1

What is the definition of “living at your means”?

Answer 1

Living at or below population carrying capacity

Question 2

What continents are responsible for population growth simply numerically?

Answer 2

Asia and Africa

Question 3

What is the general trend of the body size and abundance graph?

Answer 3

Smaller bodies are correlated with higher numbers of

Question 4

How does human population density compare to the body size and abundance graph?

Answer 4

Humans have a higher than expected population density for our body size by comparison

Question 5

Why has agricultural productivity increased even though we still have the same land amount to grow on?

Answer 5

1. GMO
2. Mechanism
3. Fertilization
4. Pesticide use

Question 6

What two variables can be used to predict population sizes?

Answer 6

Birth rate/ death rate

Question 7

What infectious diseases were main sources of mortality before the 1900s?

Answer 7

Tuberculosis, pneumonia

Question 8

What is the human trend in death rates and birth rates currently? What is this stage called?

Answer 8

Mortality is going down
Birth rates are going down
This is currently called the demographic transition.

Question 9

What is stage two of the demographic transition model?

Answer 9

The urbanizing/industrialising stage that begins to lead to lower mortality.

Question 10

What stage of the demographic transition has a high increase in population?

Answer 10

Stage 2 and to a lesser extent stage 3

Question 11

What statistics are associated with live birth rates and GDP?

Answer 11

They are inversely related. Economic prosperity leads to lower birth rates.

Question 12

How can a perfectly equitable society be graphed?

Answer 12

1:1 ratio between cumulative % of population and cumulative % of income

Question 13

What is the Lorenz curve?

Answer 13

It’s a graph of a straight perfectly equal society along with an actual bowed curve of the read relationship.

Question 14

What is the Gini coefficient?

Answer 14

The amount of deviation between a perfect equality and equality the actual equality value on the Lorenz curve.

Question 15

What is access to female secondary school percentage correlated with?

Answer 15

Lower fertility rates

Question 16

Define Ecological Footprint

Answer 16

The area of productive land required to support each person

Question 17

What is the conceptual environmental impact equation?

Answer 17

I (impact) = P(population size)A(affluence)T(Technology)

Question 18

What are the three ways environmental scarcity can arise?

Answer 18

1. Demand induced scarcity from population growth
2. Supply induced scarcity is the degradation of resources
3. Structural Scarcity is the unequal distribution of resources

Question 19

What does the ecological footprint analysis tell us?

Answer 19

Whether a place is in an ecological deficit or reserve

Question 20

How much wilderness has been modified for human use? How much potential agricultural land is in use?

Answer 20

83% of wilderness, 98% of agricultural land

Question 21

What does Wilson suggest the carrying capacity of humans is?

Answer 21

10bil with major lifestyle modifications

Question 22

Define biocapacity

Answer 22

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.

Question 23

What can we say about carrying capacities of other species on earth since 1970?

Answer 23

They have declined at very high rates (about 75%)

Question 24

What is the biggest forcer of climate change (radiative forcing)?

Answer 24

Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide

Question 25

What is the important characteristic of an ice cap?

Answer 25

It stays year-round

Question 26

What does the range expansion bar graph represent?

Answer 26

It represents the range expansion of a species correlated with climate change

Question 27

Why is human population increasing so quickly?

Answer 27

There is a decline in mortality rates with no decline in birth rates