Transcript An Overview of Methods for Estimating Urban Populations

The Human Population:
Patterns, Processes, and Problematics
Paul Sutton
[email protected]
Department of Geography
University of Denver
Outline
• Sylabus – See Handout
• Texts:
• Population: An Intro to Concepts & Issues
By John Weeks
• Guns, Germs, & Steel:
The fate of human societies
By Jared Diamond
Course Times CORE 2401
Lectures
Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday 2-2:50
Laboratory/Discussion
Thursday 2-2:50 Boettcher West 126
Who am I?
Dr. Paul C. Sutton
Department of Geography
University of Denver
Denver, CO 80208
[email protected]
(303) 871-2399
Office: Boettcher West #116
Office Hours M-Th 3-4 or by appointment
Research interests: Population Mapping with
Satellite imagery, Environmental Sustainability,
And valuation of ecosystem services
Grading
Exam #1: 20%
Exam #2: 30%
Labs 1-4: 25%
Paper: 20%
Class participation: 5%
Course Description
• Intro to Demography (The science of Population)
• Some Political Economy & Population Issues
• Demographic Perspective of related social,
economic, and environmental issues
• Appreciation of Contemporary Demographic
patterns and processes
“Human Population Growth is the single most
important set of events to occur in human history”
some questions:
• Is population growth a root cause of almost all social,
economic, and environmental problems?
• What have been the causes of population growth?
• What are the consequences of population growth?
• Why is there so much conflict concerning population
issues?
• Is demography destiny? Or, Can population patterns
and processes be planned?
Coming to grips with demographic history
Human Population Milestones
1800
1930
1960
1975
1987
1999
human population reaches
human population reaches
human population reaches
human population reaches
human population reaches
human population reaches
1 Billion
2 Billion
3 Billion
4 Billion
5 Billion
6 Billion
My father was born in 1926. Of these 6 milestones he saw
The world reach 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6 Billion (5 out of 6)
Carrying Capacity
The global human population that the earth can sustain indefinitely
• Most estimates of the world’s carrying capacity are in
the range of 6-15 billion people (how are they made?)
• In your lifetime the earth will reach carrying capacity
• Population growth is THE major contributor to
concerns about Energy Supply, Housing Shortages,
Hunger, and Environmental Degradation…..
Demography: what is it?
• A) The Science of Population
• B) The statistical analysis of populations: Birth
Rates, Death Rates, Age & Sex Structures,
Infant Mortality, Life Expectancy, etc.
• Who uses demography?: Insurance companies,
Businesses, Governments, and smart citizens
Important Phenomena with key
demographic components
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•
•
•
•
•
•
Immigration to the United States
Israeli-Palestinian Conflict in the Mid-East
Tutsi-Hutu Conflict in Rwanda and Burundi
Water wars here on the Colorado Plateau
Urban Sprawl
Loss of Biodiversity
Can you name some more?
Why study Demography?
To understand:
1) Food Security
2) Energy Supply Problems
3) Urbanization
4) Environmental Degradation
5) Migration Patterns
6) Housing Problems
7) Infrastructure Issues 8) Income distribution/economics
9) Unemployment
10) Aging issues
11) Issues associated with the classic conflict between
individual freedom and the collective good
History of Human Population Growth I
• Human Beings (homo sapiens sapiens) that you or I
could potentially breed with have been around for at
least 200,000 years
• For 180,000 years or 90% of that time we were no
more noticeable in terms of biomass, NPP
consumption, or ecological impact than coyotes are
today
• We lived as hunter-gatherers until about 10,000 years
ago. An extensive means of subsistence for which the
earth could support 5-10 million people total (i.e.
carrying capacity of earth for hunter gatherers is
about 5-10 million people)
“The Ghosts of Population Past”
~3 million years ago – Australopithecus
Homo Habilis (tool maker)
Homo Erectus
~1 million years ago - Homo Sapiens (archaic)
~200,000 years ago – Homo Sapiens (modern)
coexisted with
Homo Sapiens (Neandertal)
~35,000 years ago – Homo Sapiens replace Neandertals
~10,000 years ago - The agricultural revolution
~ 200 years ago The Industrial revolution
~ 30 years ago The green revolution
The present
(6 billion and counting)
“The Souls of Population Present”
Some Introductory Questions:
1) How many people live on the Earth Right now?
2)
6 Billion +
What is the annual Percentage Growth rate of the Planet? 1.4%
3) If this rate remained constant, how long would it take for the
Earth’s population to double? (the rule of 69)
49 Years
4) How many people are added to the Earth’s Population:
Every Year?~84,000,000
__________
Every Day?____________
~230,000
Every Hour?__________
~10,000
Every Second?__________
~3
5) How many abortions happen every year?
~50,000,000
What’s in store for future populations?
Is this graph possible?
What does zero population growth mean?
What does a sustainable economy look like?
What does the graph imply about total population?
The Graphical History of Human Population Growth
“Human beings – mammals of the 50 kilogram weight class and members of a group, the
primates, otherwise noted for scarcity – have become a hundred times more numerous than
any other land animal of comparable size in the history of life. By every conceivable measure,
humanity is ecologically abnormal. Our species appropriates between 20 and 40 per cent of the
solar energy captured in organic material by land plants. There is no way that we can draw upon
the resources of the planet to such a degree without drastically reducing the state of most other
species.”
From
E.O. Wilson’s book: “The Diversity of Life”
Major Population Shifts
•
•
•
•
1) The Agricultural Revolution
2) The Industrial Revolution
3) The ‘Green’ Revolution
4) The ‘Gene’ Revolution ????
The ‘J’ Curve
Agricultural, Industrial, Green, and Gene(?) revolutions
Major Shift #1: The agricultural revolution
• About 10,000 years ago people in various places
started planting crops. (where? Fertile Crescent, Mexico,
China…)
• This shift had profound consequences with respect
to:
a) Carrying Capacity Change
b) Population Growth Change
c) Change to spread of disease and resistance
d) Change to nature of human civilization
Why did the Agricultural Revolution Occur?
• 1) Boserup Hypothesis: Population Density
pushed to limits of hunter-gatherer carrying
capacity thus forcing innovation
• 2) Wasn’t a revolution but an evolution
from hunter-gatherer to scatterer-breeder, to
tractor driving farmer, to Archer Daniels
Midland Corporation
Major Shift #2: The Industrial Revolution
When? ~ 1750
Where? England -> Western Europe
How? Coal, Steam Engines, Factories, Canals
Why? Population reached agricultural carrying capacity
and industrial innovation eliminated need for rural labor
What happened? Out-migration from Europe to New World
The setting of the Industrial
Revolution
1) Occurred in Western Europe & Diffused from there
2) World population almost 1 billion
(reaches 1 billion ~1800)
1) Defines the beginning of the population explosion
Major Shift #3: The Green Revolution
Changes in Corn, Wheat, and Rice Breeding in 1960’s that
dramatically improved yields (lbs of rice,wheat,etc./acre)
Changes in health care (antibiotics, vaccines, sanitation, etc.)
that dramatically reduced death rates
Result: Sustained astronomic population growth just when
collapse seemed imminent
Beginning in the mid-1940s researchers in Mexico
developed broadly adapted, short-stemmed,
disease-resistant wheats that excelled at converting
fertilizer and water into high yields. The improved
seeds were instrumental in boosting Mexican
wheat production and averting famine in India and
Pakistan, earning the 1970 Nobel Peace Prize for
American plant breeder Norman E. Borlaug,
leader of the Mexican wheat team.
Major Shift #4: The ‘Gene’ Revolution
• Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs)
frankensteined together by Monsanto and others to
develop super-plants
• Upside – Increase food production, Feed more
people
• Downside – interactions and cross-breeding with
wild strains with indeterminate consequences
• Results: Anti-globalization protests around the
world – New World Order or New World Chaos?
Should we mess around with
Mother Nature’s Most profound
Molecules?
Problems with measurement
• In 1987 Matej Gaspar was a baby boy born
to a Yugoslavian Nurse. The United Nations
declared him to be the birth that brought the
world’s total population to the 5 billion
milestone.
• Do you believe that?
Problems with measurement
• In 1987 Matej Gaspar was a baby boy born
to a Yugoslavian Nurse. The United Nations
declared him to be the birth that brought the
world’s total population to the 5 billion
milestone.
• Do you believe that?
How fast is the world’s
population growing now?
• Highest % growth ever: ~2.2 %/year 1962-3
• Today’s % growth 1.2 – 1.4 %/year
• 70-80 million per year
• Over 200,000 per day
• 4.1 births/sec – 1.7 deaths/sec = 2.4/sec
Doubling Time
The Rule of ’69’
• If you know the % growth rate and assume growth
rate is constant then:
• Doubling Time = 69 / % growth rate
• Today: 69 / 1.2 = 57 years
• If growth constant you are alive at 77 then you might be
sharing the planet with 12 + billion people
Has the World’s Population ever shrunk?
• 1) In the beginning the base population was so small that there were probably
many large %age fluctuations
• 2) Black Plague in 1400’s hit humans really hard particularly in Europe. This
probably caused a real downturn in global population total
• 3) WWI combined with 1918-19 influenza
killed over 45 million but probably just slowed
growth rather than sent it negative.
• Mao Zedong’s “Great Leap Forward” during
China’s cultural revolution (1958-60) starved
at least 30 million Chinese to death
• AIDS in Africa today is killing millions and
may decimate 1/3 of African Contient’s population.
Nonethless, global total will still increase
The influenza pandemic of 1918-1919 killed more people than the Great War,
known today as World War I (WWI), at somewhere between 20 and 40 million
people. It has been cited as the most devastating epidemic in recorded world
history. More people died of influenza in a single year than in four-years of the
Black Death Bubonic Plague from 1347 to 1351. Known as "Spanish Flu" or
"La Grippe" the influenza of 1918-1919 was a global disaster.
How fast can a population grow?
• A woman in Russia had 69 children from 27
pregnancies. However; the average maximum
biological fecundity for women is about 16
children
• Highest group fertility rate was for the Hutterites
in Pennsylvania in the 1930s: 12 children / woman
• Global maximum growth rate 2.2% in 1962-3
• Fortunately most people in all ages control their
fertility by some means; nonetheless, many argue
global population still growing too fast.
Next Lecture:
• How many humans have ever lived?
• How are humans spread out on the globe
today?
• What are the demographic patterns on the
globe today?