Effects of population growth and human activities on agriculture and on industrial development?

Answer 1

AQA Science GCSE Biology Text Book-

For many thousands of years people lived on the Earth in quite small numbers. There were only a few hundred million of us! We were scattered all over the world, and the effects of our activity were usually small and local. Any changes could easily be absorbed by the environment where we lived.

But in the last 200 years or so, the human population has grown very quickly. At the end of the 20th century the human population was over 6 billion, and it is still growing.

If the population of any other species of animal or plant had suddenly increased in this way, natural predators, lack of food, build up of waste products or disease would have reduced it again. But we have diacovered how to grow more food than we could ever gather from the wild. We can cure or prevent many killer diseases. We have no natural predators. This helps to explain why the human population has grown so fast.

Not only have our numbers grown hugely, but in large parts of the world our standard of living has also improved enormously. We use fossil feuls like oil to produce electricity. We also use it to move about in cars, planes, trians and boats at high speed and to make materials like plastics. We have ore than enough to eat and if we are ill we can often be made better

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Overpopulation (also called overinhabitation) refers to a condition where an organism's numbers exceed the carrying capacity of its habitat. In common parlance, the term usually refers to the relationship between the human population and its environment, the Earth.[1]

Overpopulation is not a function of the size or density of the population. Overpopulation is determined using the ratio of population to available sustainable resources. If a given environment has a population of ten, but there is food or drinking water enough for only nine, then that environment is overpopulated; if the population is 100 individuals but there is enough food, shelter, and water for 200 for the indefinite future, then it is not. Overpopulation can result from an increase in births, a decline in mortality rates due to medical advances, from an increase in Immigration, a decrease in emigration, or from an unsustainable biome and depletion of resources. It is possible for very sparsely-populated areas to be overpopulated, as the area in question may have a meager or non-existent capability to sustain human life (e.g. the middle of the Sahara Desert or Antarctica).

The resources to be considered when evaluating whether an ecological niche is overpopulated include clean water, clean air, food, shelter, warmth, and other resources necessary to sustain life. If the quality of human life is addressed, there may be additional resources considered, such as medical care, employment, education, electricity, proper sewage treatment and waste disposal. Overpopulation places competitive stress on these basic life sustaining resources, leading to a diminished quality of life.[2]

Some countries have managed to increase their carrying capacity by using technologies such as modern agriculture, desalination and nuclear power. Some economists, such as Thomas Sowell[3] and Walter E. Williams[4] have argued that poverty and famine are caused by bad government and economic policies, not by overpopulation. In his book The Ultimate Resource, economist Julian Simon argued that higher population density leads to more specialization and technological innovation, and that this leads to a higher standard of living. Others argue that overpopulation is an important cause of these problems[2][5].

Answer 2

as the population of the world is growing so is the demand for food also. it is developing countries that are facing shortage of food more than the developed countries as the farmer's population is increasing rapidly. to provide for

fast-growing population, farmers need to increase their produce per acre. for this they use fertilisers which increase their produce temporarily. not only this, they use pesticides which ensure that the produce is not spoilt. as this trend increase land quality degrades with every passing year. food too is contaminated by the overuse of fertilisers and pesticides

Answer 3

Hi,

I am not a scientist but from science background for sure. As far as I understand about wildlife. Surface except water on earth must be green as much as it can be maintained (I mean to say it must be covered by green leaves of plant & trees). Lack of this yield the globe to get warm.

Thanks

Jay Khatri
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