Population Growth: Historical Change, Models, and Sustainability

All flashcards

What processes can cause a population to grow?

Births can exceed deaths, arrivals can exceed departures, or both can occur.

What is the Haber process?

A process that enables large-scale ammonia production for fertilizer, supporting greater food production.

What did Thomas McKeown argue drove much of modern population growth?

Falling mortality, especially childhood and infant mortality, rather than a major rise in fertility.

What is carrying capacity in a logistic growth model?

The maximum population size the environment can sustain in the model.

Why do population projections differ?

They use different assumptions about factors such as fertility, mortality, migration, and social change.

Quiz questions

1. What does a zero population growth rate over an interval indicate?Answer: The population has the same size at the interval’s beginning and end.
2. In the absence of migration, what does a net reproduction rate above 1 indicate?Answer: The population of females is increasing.
3. How does a logistic model describe growth as population size approaches carrying capacity?Answer: Growth slows as the population approaches carrying capacity.
4. Why should a population projection be treated as a conditional estimate?Answer: It depends on assumptions about future demographic and social changes.
5. What helps explain why population size alone cannot account for every environmental impact?Answer: The ways resources are produced and consumed also affect environmental pressures.