Geography Prep - Book Questions
1) a) Underpopulation is the state of a country, which has not yet reached optimum population. There are too few people living in an area to use resources to their full potential. An example of an underpopulated country would be Canada. It does not consume too many resources and has few inhabitants in comparison with its size.
b) Overpopulation is the state of a country, which has exceeded the number of inhabitants it can sustain (optimum population). In overpopulated countries, resources are used unsustainably. For example, if everyone lived how the average North American, we would need roughly 4 Earths.
c) Optimum population occurs when a country has just the right amount of inhabitants. These inhabitants require a certain amount of resources each. If a country reaches optimum population, the resources it exploits and uses will be sustainable.
2) a) Throughout the ages, humans were required to adapt in order to survive. Once they found the correct adaptations, humans became the most important specie. Population size of humans increases exponentially. There were not many at the beginning, but once a certain point was hit, the number of people began to rapidly increase. People were living longer and had higher survival rates, therefore, with death rates low, the population increased rapidly.
b) As the world became more populated from time A to time b, more and more pressure built up. Humans most likely became desperate due to reaching the Earth’s carrying capacity that they strived for new methods of living and to find new resources. People developed new strategies for farming and producing food to feed the larger population and also discovered new resources, which aided in sustaining the growing population.
c) Dynamic models change with reference to time, whereas static models represent more of an independent view. Figure 9 shows the growth of population over a period of time and shows