Human Population - Size Of The Human Population, Carrying Capacity And Growth Of The Human Population, Future Human Population
lifestyle biosphere living impact
The number of human beings on Earth has increased enormously during the past several millennia, but especially during the last two centuries: from 1850 to 1950 the human population doubled, from 1.265 billion to 2.516 billion, and has more than doubled from 1950 to the present. Moreover, it is likely that the human population—presently at over 6.215 billion—will continue to increase.
The recent growth of the human population has resulted in intense damage to the biosphere, representing a global environmental crisis. The degradation has occurred on a scale and intensity that is comparable to the enormous effects of such geological processes as glaciation. The impact of the human population on any one region, as on the biosphere as a whole, is a function of two interacting factors: (1) the actual number of people and (2) their per-capita environmental impact, which largely depends on the degree of industrialization of the society and on the lifestyles of individuals. In general, more damage is done to the earth to support a person living a highly industrialized lifestyle than to support one living a pretechnical-agricultural or hunter-gatherer lifestyle. However, a direct correlation between industrialized comfort and birthrate is often observed: the more well-to-do a population is (e.g., that of Europe or the United States), the lower its birth rate tends to be.
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The human species, Homo sapiens, is by far the most abundant large animal on Earth. Our world population is growing at about 1.5% annually, that is, at about 80 million people per year. If the percentage of annual growth remains constant, the number of people added yearly increases: 1.5% of 100 is 1.5, but 1.5% of 200 is 3. Thus, 80 million new people per year is an approximate figure valid only f…
A population of organisms changes in response to the balance of the rates at which new individuals are added by births and immigration and the rate at which they are lost by deaths and emigration. Zero population growth occurs when the growth and loss parameters are balanced. These demographic relationships hold for all species, including ours. The history of Homo sapiens extends to somewhat more …
The growth rate of the global human population achieved a maximum during the late 1960s, when it was 2.1% per year. If sustained, this rate was capable of doubling the population in only 33 years. This rate of increase slowed somewhat to 1.5% per year in the 1999, equivalent to a doubling time of 47 years, and in 2002 had slipped to about 1.3%. Even at today's comparatively modest growth ra…
Population structure refers to the relative abundance of males and females, and of individuals in various age classes. The latter type of structure is significantly different for growing versus stable populations and has important implications for future changes in population size. Populations that have not been increasing or decreasing for some time have similar proportions in various age classes…
The huge increases in size of the human population have resulted in a substantial degradation of environmental conditions. The changes have largely been characterized by deforestation, unsustainable harvesting of potentially renewable resources (such as wild animals and plants that are of economic importance), rapid mining of non-renewable resources (such as metals and fossil fuels), pollution, an…
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