Author Question: List the parameters you think you would need to keep track of to make accurate predictions about ... (Read 118 times)

Ebrown · **on:** Jul 15, 2018

List the parameters you think you would need to keep track of to make accurate predictions about future human population growth. For example, what conditions might drive mortality and fertility trends?

What will be an ideal response?

Question 2

Why do some people see humans as not subject to the law of limiting factors? How would you respond to them?

What will be an ideal response?

ryhom · **Reply #1 on:** Jul 15, 2018

Answer to Question 1

Parameters necessary for projecting future human population growth include birthrates, death rates, fertility rate, and expected immigration rates. Some conditions that might drive mortality and fertility trends include projected disease trends, economic environment, and recent trends in fertility rate.

Answer to Question 2

Humans have been able to overcome limiting factors so often in the past because of our unique ability to change our circumstances for the better. With the help of ingenuity and technology we have engineered ourselves out of environmental situations that would have limited other populations. This pattern of population growth is exactly what you would expect to see under the law of limiting factorseach time a limit is removed, the population increases until there is another limiting factor. Human kind, therefore, has been subject to the law of limiting factors for as long as we have lived. In response to this argument, students may assert that we have increased our carrying capacity at the risk of hurting other organisms on Earth and that this cannot continue in the long term.