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Population & the Land Population & the Land Introduction Population Growth Rates A Sustainable Society Modification of Natural Systems The Land Ethic The Biosphere Ecosystems & Biomes Biodiversity & Species Preservation Summary Who cannot wonder at this harmony of things, at this symphony of nature which seems to will the well-being of the world? Cicero Population, when unchecked, increases in a geometrical ratio. Subsistence increases only in an arithmetical ratio. A slight acquaintance with numbers will show the immensity of the first power in comparison with the second. Thomas Malthus Introduction • Increasing human populations place increasing stresses on Earth’s finite resources. • It currently takes about 11 years to add a billion people to Earth. • Current global population is just over 6 billion. English curate, Thomas Malthus, published a famous essay on population growth in 1798 in which he predicted that population size would grow faster than agricultural production resulting in a lack of future food supplies. Although Malthus correctly identified the upward trend of population growth, he did not anticipate concomitant advances in food production and resource extraction that would meet the physical and material needs of the burgeoning global population. However, Malthus's basic observation remains true, population-related trends expand exponentially by a constant rate, for example, 2% per year, whereas agricultural trends typically increase arithmetically by a constant value, such as 2,000 tons per year (Fig. 1). For example, compare the rate of increase in irrigated farmland worldwide (three million hectares per year) with the growth in number of telephone lines (5% per year). The second section of this chapter considers how population growth rates have varied with time and the Figure 1. Arithmetic implications for global population distributions in the next vs. exponential increases. The area of irrigated farmland has increased by a near-constant value each year (~3 million hectares per year, an arithmetic increase), whereas the number of telephone lines increased at a constant rate (~5% per year, an exponential increase) century. since 1960. An exponential increase Population Distribution creates the concave- upward graph shown A third of the world’s population lives in just two countries, on the right, China and India, out of 227 nations, and just over half of the sometimes called a J- world's people live in six nations (Fig. 2; China, India, U.S., curve. Indonesia, Brazil, and Russia). 2 Figure 2. Top twenty Concern over increasing population size has continued to the nations ranked by present. Ecologist, Paul Ehrlich, has written, “No geological population. Note that event in a billion years has posed a threat to terrestrial life most populous comparable to that of human overpopulation.” Ehrlich sees a nations are located in or near the tropics. finite world with a limited volume of resources that will be diminished more rapidly as populations grow. In contrast, economist Julian Simon suggests, “There is no meaningful limit to our capacity to keep growing forever.” Simon views human beings as the world’s greatest resource and anticipates that we will create new technologies to deal with problems associated with increasing population size. The fate of the world rests on how the growing population chooses how to use the planet's finite resources. In an ideal world, we would develop into a sustainable society, a society that satisfies its need for resources without jeopardizing the needs of future generations. Current world population is over 6 billion and is updated daily at the U.S. Census Bureau website. The expansion of population has resulted in the growth of cities and the conversion of natural environments to agricultural lands. The fourth section of the chapter reviews some of the changes that we have made to the planet in the modification of natural systems resulting from population growth. Conservationist Aldo Leopold viewed each person as a member of both the social community of people and the ecological community of plants, animals, and the land. He 3 termed this concept the land ethic, and we use his idea as a springboard to discuss humans impact on the other members of the biosphere in the final sections of the chapter. Leopold suggested that just as in society where we have certain obligations and privileges, we have similar constraints on our behavior as members of an ecological community. Modern biology was born in the mind of Charles Darwin on the Galapagos Islands (Fig. 3) in 1835. It was here that Darwin’s observation “that the different islands to a considerable extent are inhabited by a different set of beings” identified the concept of the ecosystem that links organisms to specific physical environments. The penultimate section of the chapter reviews the characteristics of the biosphere including Figure 3. View of the flow of energy and nutrients between organisms and the Galapagos Islands physical environment. The Galapagos ecosystems of Darwin’s from space. Image time still exist but, like many elements of the biosphere, are courtesy of NASA. increasingly endangered by human activities. Native species have been threatened by invaders such as goats, pigs, dogs, and rats, introduced to the islands following the arrival of Europeans in the sixteenth century. Recent programs have successfully removed invasive pests from some islands and the native vegetation has rebounded as a result. The presence of increasing numbers of people, all attempting to improve their standard of living, places greater stress on the environment, not only from the perspective of resource use, but also from pollution of air and water, and from the need to dispose of larger volumes of waste. To evaluate the impact of human activity on nature we must first identify the parameters that influence the distribution of specific associations of plants and animals at a regional scale. These associations are termed biomes and are composed of multiple interrelated ecosystems. The final sections of the chapter, ecosystems & biomes and biodiversity & species preservation review the major biomes of the world, the human activities that impact the natural order, and efforts to preserve species that are threatened by extinction. 4 Population Growth Rates • Global population is expected to stabilizeto between 10 to 11 billion because of declining population growth rates. • Population growth rates have been in decline since the early 1960s. • Population growth is dependent upon current population size and growth rate. • Current population growth rate is approximately 1.3%. Seventy-eight million people are added to the planet annually, approximately the population of Vietnam (the world's 14th most populous nation). An additional billion people are added to the world's population every 12 to 13 years at current growth rates. At that rate, world population would be over 14 billion by the end of the next century. However, the good news is that population growth rates have declined by approximately a third in the last few decades. The continued decline in growth rates is expected to result in a global population of around 10 billion by the year 2100 (Fig. 4). Figure 4. Graph of world population in the past and projected into the future. Note: the time scale increases in irregular intervals. The Basics of Population Growth Population growth rates are determined by the balance between the number of people added to a nation's population by birth and immigration and the number who are lost through death or emigration. Population = birth rate - death rate + immigration - emigration growth rate Population growth in the U.S. is determined by: • Birth rate of 14 per 1,000 people. • Immigration of ~4 per 1,000 people. • Death rate of 9 per 1,000 people. • Emigration is negligible. • The U.S. population growth rate is 14 + 4 – 9 = 9 per 1,000 people, or 0.9%. 5 Without ongoing immigration, U.S. natural population growth rates would approach 0.5%. Population changes in individual nations may result from an influx or an outflow of refugees fleeing persecution. Over 22 million people were recognized as refugees by the United Nations (UN) in 1998. Approximately 2.6 million citizens of Afghanistan were displaced by internal conflicts. Many of these people fled to Iran which saw its population increase by 2 million. Pakistan, Germany, and the U.S. all saw their populations increase by over a million people the UN considered refugees. Figure 5. Global population growth (red line) vs. selected growth rates. Note that population increased at low rates (0.5%) for the first quarter century and accelerated to faster average growth rates (1.5%) in recent years. Life was relatively short and brutish for much of human history and death rates were close to birth rates so population increased relatively slowly until the 1900s. In some cases death rates exceeded birthrates during outbreaks of rapidly spreading fatal diseases such as the Black Death (plague) in medieval Europe which caused global populations to decline. Global population reached 1 billion in the early 1800s. It took over a hundred years for the population to double to 2 billion in the late 1920’s. Death rates declined during the second half of the 20th century with the advent of modern medicine, better sanitation, and improved nutrition. Rapid population growth followed as the gap between birth rates and death rates widened. Global population passed the three billion people mark in 1960, accelerated to 4 billion in 1974, 5 billion in 1987, and reached six billion in October 1999 (Figs. 4, 5). Demographers (people who study changing population trends) recognize four stages of population growth (Fig. 6): 1. Both birth rate and death rate are high in relatively primitive societies (e.g., pre-1800s); population growth rates are low. 6 2. Birth rates remain high and death rates decline as technology and health facilities improve; growth rates increase.
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