CHAPTER INTRODUCTION
No event in human history has equaled the rapid increase in population over the last 10,000 years. This is in sharp contrast to the 200,000 years following the emergence of Homo sapiens in Africa, during which the earth's human population grew very slowly, its numbers rising and falling in res-ponse to the "traditional" controllers of population: environmental change, disease, and availability of food. As the last glaciation retreated and the Holocene epoch began, the amount of habitable space increased and unprecedented events began to occur in Earth's history.
The study of population is termed demography, derived from ancient Greek words roughly meaning to "describe and write about people." The focus of population geography is on the spatial aspects of demography. The key questions in geography are where and why there? These lead to some penetrating insights into population issues.
Population Growth
The dominant issue in population geography remains growth. The world's population is currently growing at a rate that is more than ten times the total estimated world population at the beginning of the Holocene and the bulk of this growth is occurring in the world's poorer countries. The Earth's environments and natural resources are strained as never before by the needs of a mush-rooming human population, a population that has more than doubled in the last 50 years. Problems resulting from unprecedented population growth became especially acute in the twentieth century. A continued high rate of population growth in the twenty-first century can have a calamitous im-pact, causing irreversible damage to the natural systems on which we depend for our existence and survival.
Population Distribution
From the beginning, humanity has been unevenly distributed over the land and this pattern was in-tensified during the twentieth century. Whether urban or rural, populations tend to cluster in certain areas (see text Figure 4-1) because, as you will recall from earlier discussions, much of the Earth is unsuitable for human occupancy (refer back to text figures 3-4 and 3-5). To handle contrasts of this type on maps, geographers use measures of population distribution—the locations on the Earth's surface where individuals or groups (depending on the scale of the map) are concentrated —and the density of the population figured as the number of people per unit area of land.
Text Figure 4-1 shows patterns of population distribution for the world using the dot method. It shows that the world's three largest population concentrations all lie on the Eurasian landmass —East Asia, South Asia, and Europe—each associated with a major civilization. It also reminds us that the overwhelming majority of the world's population inhabits the Northern Hemi-sphere.
East Asia, centered on China but extending to Korea and Japan, contains about one-quarter of the world's population—nearly 1.3 billion in China alone. The map shows that the population is concentrated toward the coast with ribbon-like extensions found on the basins and lowlands of China's major rivers. The great majority of people in East Asia are farmers.
India lies at the center of the South Asian concentration with extensions to Pakistan, Bangladesh, and the island of Sri Lanka. This is one of the greatest concentrations of people on Earth with about 1.5 billion people. It is a confined region (the Himalaya Mountains on the north and the desert west of the Indus River in Pakistan) with a rapidly growing population. By almost any estimate, the capacity of the region to support this population has been exceeded. As in East Asia, the majority are farmers.
Europe, the third-ranking population cluster, also lies in Eurasia but at the opposite end from China. This cluster contains about 700 million people, which puts it in a class with the South Asian concentration, but the similarity ends there. In Europe, unlike East and South Asia, terrain and environment are not as closely related to population distribution. Another contrast lies in the fact that the majority of the European population live in cities and towns, leaving the rural country-side more open and sparsely populated. These contrasts with the East and South Asian clusters reflect the impact of the Industrial Revolution on Europe over the last 200-plus years.
Population Density
Population density can be measured on the basis of several different criteria, revealing contrasting aspects of a country's demography. Text Figure 4-2 illustrates density via the isopleth method. The data in Resource B at the end of your textbook provide area, total population, and density per square mile for every country. One must examine such data with caution, however, since the high cost and organizational challenges of census taking often produce unreliable data. Arithmetic and physiologic population densities are the two most common approaches. These two methods become more meaningful and useful when compared with each other.
CHAPTER QUIZ
MULTIPLE-CHOICE QUESTIONS
1. Demography is the study of:
a. physical geography
b. population
c. animals
d. climate
2. Which country has the highest arithmetic density of people.
a. Japan
b. Bangladesh
c. India
d. Netherlands
3. Physiologic density of a country relates the total population of a country to the:
a. number of people living on farmlands
b. population divided into total acres of farmland
c. acres of farmland available
d. population living in villages and cities
4. About ? of the world's population lives in East Asia.
a. one-half
b. one-third
c. one-fifth
d. one-fourth
5. One of the greatest concentrations of population, according to your text, is:
a. in Argentina
b. on the Ganges River plain in northern India
c. in Bangladesh
d. on the Nile River
6. In Germany ? percent of the people live in cities.
a. 85
b. 90
c. 50
d. 75
7. In the United States, the largest urban complex, called a megalopolis, lies:
a. in Florida and north to South Carolina
b. along the Pacific coast in Southern California
c. in Chicago and its surrounding area
d. from Boston to Baltimore
8. Southeast Asia has ? clusters of population.
a. contiguous
b. few
c. discrete
d. large
9. The population of Sub-Saharan Africa is nearly:
a. 200 million
b. 350 million
c. 400 million
d. 650 million
10. Geographically, the spatial distribution of population in Australia and South America is:
a. very scattered
b. concentrated in the interior regions
c. peripheral
d. concentrated on plateaus
TRUE/FALSE QUESTIONS
1. In the poorer countries, people tend to cluster in the urban areas because there is little farmland. (TF)
2. Population distribution dot-maps are used primarily to show where people live. (TF)
3. Physiologic density maps more accurately show population densities because they are based on urban land clusters. (TF)
4. In China, farmers far outnumber people living in cities. (TF)
5. The country of Bangladesh has a population of nearly 133 million people living in an area about the size of Iowa. (TF)
6. In contrast to East and South Asia, Europe's population centers are not closely related to terrain and environment. Instead they are related exclusively to the coal-fields. (TF)
7. In the United States the largest urban agglomeration is located along the Pacific coast. (TF)
8. Southeast Asia does not have large contiguous urban areas because it is made up of islands. (TF)
9. In Africa, there are no agglomerations comparable to those in Asia. (TF)
10. With land reforms it would be possible for South America to support a much larger population. (TF)
STUDY QUESTIONS
1. List and explain the problems high population growth rates are causing in the world today.
2. Define and discuss the difference between arithmetic and physiologic densities. What is lacking in each? Why aren't either of these completely accurate?
3. How does the spatial distribution of population of North America and Europe differ from that of East Asia and South Asia? How are populations spatially distributed in South America and Australia?
4. How does Japan support its large population? What special problems does this country have that are not faced by the other developed nations?
