Module: Earth and Human activity
Lesson1: Human population growth
How fast is the population growing?
A population is all the members of a species living in a given area.
Human Population
When the first American towns were settled, most had low populations. Today, some of those
towns are large cities, crowded with people.
In a similar way, Earth was once home to relatively few humans Scientists estimate that there
were about 300 million humans on Earth a thousand years ago.
Improved health care, clean water, and other technological advancements mean that more
people are living longer and reproducing.
the greatest increase in human population occurred during the last few centuries. Today there
are more than 7 billion humans on Earth. By 2050 there could be over 9 billion.
Population Structure
Populations have a tendency to increase in size. However, many factors influence the rate at
which a population can grow.
1- the rate of increase is determined by subtracting the number of individuals leaving a
population from the number entering the population.
Individuals leave a population either by death or emigration, (which is when people leave an
area to settle somewhere else) they enter the population by birth or immigration (which
is when people enter an area to live there)
2- Another important characteristic of any population is its age structure.
Age Structure
A population's age structure is the number of males and females in each of three age groups:
pre-reproductive state, reproductive state, and post-reproductive state.
1- A nongrowing population looks like a rectangle.
2- A slow-growing population looks like a rectangle with a bulge in the middle.
3- A rapidly growing population looks like a triangle with its base at the bottom. Kenya has a
large portion of pre-reproductive and reproductive individuals The United States has
a smaller proportion of these two groups, and Germany has an even smaller portion.
Increasing and Decreasing Populations
The diagram below shows the relative numbers of individuals in:
1- Pre reproductive. 2- reproductive. 3- post-reproductive years (for three countries):
Kenya, the United States, and Germany.
Birth rate and death rate change the size of a population. In the
1700s the death rate of sea otters in central California was
extremely high because many people hunted them.
By the 1930s only about 50 sea otters remained. Today, the Marine
Mammal Protection Act protects sea otters from being hunted.
How does human population growth affect natural resources?
Every human being needs certain things, such as food, clean water, and shelter, to survive.
People also need clothes, transportation, and other items. All the items used by people come
from resources found on Earth.
A natural resource is a part of the environment that supplies material useful or necessary for
the survival of living things.
Population Limits
As the human population grows larger and larger, cities become
crowded with people, using space and depleting resources. Earth has
limited resources. It cannot support a population of any species in a
given environment beyond its carrying capacity.
Carrying capacity is the largest number of individuals of a given
species that Earth's resources can support and maintain for a long period of time.
Approaching Carrying Capacity
Each person uses space and resources. Population size depends on the amount of available
resources and how members of the population use them.
(When population density is low resources are abundant, and population increases).
If resources become scarce or if the environment is damaged, members of the population can
suffer and population size can decrease
(If the human population continues to grow beyond Earth's carrying capacity eventually
Earth will not have enough resources to support humans).
Is human population growth equal around the world?
In approximately one hour, 15,000 babies are born worldwide Technological advances have
resulted in a rapid growth in human population.
MATH Connection Now, calculate the population growth rate (PGR) for each of these
countries. Record this information in the table below. Use the following equation.
birth rate − death rate + net migration rate
𝑃𝐺𝑅(%) =
10
Population Growth Rates
Country Population Birth rate Death Rate Net Migration PGR (%)
2015 (millions) Rate
*United States 321.2 13 8 3 0.8 %
*Germany 81.1 8 11 5 0.2 %
Brazil 204.5 15 6 0 …..
Indonesia 255.7 21 6 -1 …..
Nigeria 181.8 39 14 0 …..
India 1,314.1 21 7 -1 …..
Growing Populations and Resource Use
Another important factor in keeping the human population at or below the carrying capacity is
the amount of resources from the biosphere that are used by each person.
Currently, individuals in industrially developed countries ) (الدول المتقدمةuse far more resources
than those individuals in developing countries.)(الدول النامية
Countries such as India are becoming more industrialized, and they have a relatively high
growth rate.
These countries are adding more people and are increasing their use of resources.
Lesson2: People and the environment
Why cut down trees?
Many experts are concerned about the loss of forest cover worldwide. The removal of large
areas of forests for human purposes is called deforestation.
Urbanization
increases in the size of the human population cause increases in the consumption of natural
resources:
1- Trees are cut down for fuel, paper products, and wood products.
2- People also clear forests for urban development. Urbanization-the development of towns
and cities on previously natural areas.
Agriculture
Exploding population growth on our planet and the amount of land available to produce food
for that population are not keeping pace with each other.
Forest clearing for agriculture helps answer the question of how the world's growing human
population can be fed.
Brazil's Cerrado represents one of the world's last opportunities to open a large area of new.
highly productive cropland.
The Cerrado, 2 million hectares of grassland and tropical forest, is the site of the world's
fastest-growing soybean production.
Rapid growth of soy production in Brazil has both positive and negative aspects
On one hand, more food is now On the other hand, the rapid
available to feed the world. expansion of agriculture
worldwide-at the expense of
forests-has environmental effects
on Earth's systems.
How does deforestation impact Earth's systems?
Nearly half of the world's tropical deforestation occurs in the "arc of deforestation between
the Cerrado and the Amazon rain forest.
Changes in Earth's Systems
The consumption of natural resources, like trees and land, has environmental effects of global
importance.
1- Forest clearing for cropland and pasture diminishes habitat. Habitat loss is often the
greatest extinction threat for the biosphere.
2- Clearing forests can also affect the geosphere and hydrosphere.
3- Plant roots hold soil in place. Without these natural anchors, soil erodes away.
4- Drought can also follow deforestation. Cleared land dries rapidly and stores little moisture.
5- And finally, deforestation also impacts the atmosphere. Trees remove carbon dioxide from
the atmosphere during photosynthesis Rates of photosynthesis decrease when large
areas of trees are cut down, and more carbon dioxide remains in the atmosphere.
What can be done?
For resource use to be sustainable, we cannot consume resources faster than nature can
replenish them. Therefore, scientists, governments, and concerned citizens around the world
are working to identify environmental problems, educate the public about them, and help find
solutions.
Personal Choices
The concept of an ecological footprint has been developed to help individuals measure their
environmental impact on Earth.
Your ecological footprint is defined as the area of Earth's productive land and water required
to supply the resources that an individual demands as well as to absorb the wastes that the
individual produces.
Sustainable Resource Use
Technological change sometimes can reduce our ecological footprint. For example, world food
production has increased about fourfold since 1950,
1- mainly through advances in irrigation
2- fertilizer use,
3- and higher-yielding crop varieties,
4- rather than through increased croplands.
5- Similarly, switching to renewable energy sources such as wind and solar power can greatly
reduce our ecological footprint.
In Germany, which has invested heavily in wind, solar, small-scale hydropower, and public
transportation, the ecological footprint is only 4.6 global hectares (gha) per person.
In comparison, the average resident of the United States lives at a
consumption level that requires 7.2 gha of biologically productive land.
