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Carrying Capacity

The document discusses the concept of carrying capacity, which is the maximum population size that can be sustained in a stable state in a given environment. It provides examples of populations exceeding carrying capacity, including reindeer on St. Matthew Island and the Mayan civilization, leading to population declines and societal collapses.

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136 views

Carrying Capacity

The document discusses the concept of carrying capacity, which is the maximum population size that can be sustained in a stable state in a given environment. It provides examples of populations exceeding carrying capacity, including reindeer on St. Matthew Island and the Mayan civilization, leading to population declines and societal collapses.

Uploaded by

PangiDoank
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
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population
matters

Carrying capacity

The maximum number of individuals that can


be supported sustainably by a given environment is known as its carrying capacity. For
most non-human species, the concept is quite
simple. If carrying capacity is exceeded, the
population declines because its environment
can no longer support the excess numbers. In
many situations this can happen very rapidly
because excessive demand degrades or
even devastates the environment and there
is a sudden and catastrophic feedback effect.
Such a feedback effect can not only eradicate
those numbers of population in excess of the
carrying capacity of an environment but under
certain circumstances it can cause the near
extinction of an entire species.

On St Matthew Island in the Bering


Sea the US Coastguard shipped in
29 reindeer in 1944 as food for the
navigation station personnel, but
none were ever shot and all 29 were
left behind at the end of the war. By
1957 the herd swelled in size to over
a thousand, thriving on the abundant moss and lichen. Although the
animals were healthy, observers
noted small patches of overgrazing.
The island had reached its carrying
capacity. Six thousand were counted
in 1963. The reindeer were thin
and showing signs of stress. When
observers returned in 1966, the
island was littered with skeletons.
The herd had been reduced to just
42 reindeer with no active males; it
faced extinction in the next generation and the island environment had
become devastated by the herd1.

Glossary

In-depth

A population can exceed the carrying capacity


of its environment for a short while by using
up the stored resources (ie natural capital)
of its environment, but sooner or later the
overshoot will catch up. Once the capital
is exhausted, population numbers inevitably fall because there are no longer enough
resources available to support the number of
individuals.
In the case of human populations, there is
a large variation in per capita consumption
levels between poor and afuent communities, so the basic denition of carrying capacity needs to be qualied and the given level of
per capita consumption and waste generation
needs to be taken into consideration. The carrying capacity of a given environment is much
greater for people living at a subsistence level
than it is for people with a typical Western
European or North American lifestyle.
It is also important to note that different geographic regions have a greater or smaller carrying capacity. Climate and local geography
both play a crucial part. In some parts of the
world, endemic species recover swiftly following a drop in population, whereas in other
areas of the world recovery is measured in tens
or hundreds of years. Polynesian settlers who
crossed the Pacic left behind a landscape
which responded well to burning (they used
re to clear land and refresh forest growth)
but the lands they settled did not. The decline
in tree cover on Easter Island, Hawaii and
New Zealand is attributed to a fundamental
misunderstanding of the localised conditions
by the newly arriving people2. Similarly, the
Viking community which settled in Greenland
experienced a parallel collapse when they
attempted to farm the marginal lands in the
same manner they had done with other lands
where they settled, but without taking account

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population
matters

Carrying capacity, contd.

of local conditions3. The lesson is that we


cannot assume that any particular agricultural
method is sustainable in all circumstances.
Another case where a human community is
believed to have exceeded its carrying capacity is that of the Mayans. It appears that population pressure forced them to cultivate more
and more marginal land, leading to a reduction
of carrying capacity in their ecosystem. The
forest land was not amenable to long-term
intense cultivation, leading to topsoil erosion
on a large scale. This in turn led to conict
between Mayan cities to compete for land
which inevitably could not support the rising
populations; conict and gradual collapse of
their society ensued4.
In a number of other instances where peoples
have disappeared, this has been at least in

part attributed to their populations exceeding


the carrying capacity of their local ecosystems.
However, where the evidence is archaeological rather than historically documented, it is
often difcult to determine with any certainty
the extent to which overpopulation rather than
other factors such as climate change, conict,
social unrest, etc, was the principal cause of
the collapse. The fact that declining welfare of
communities can be the result of a combination of factors also means that the symptoms
of a population being near to exceeding its carrying capacity are often misread. For example
starvation following a poor harvest may be
attributed only to the poor harvest rather than
the population size.
Read about BioCapacity and Ecological
Footprint.

References
Internet references accessed 07/12/2010
1. http://www.gi.alaska.edu/ScienceForum/ASF16/1672.html When Reindeer Paradise Turned to
Purgatory, Article #1672 by Ned Rozell. Also http://dieoff.org/page80.htm
2. Jared Diamond, Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Survive, Allen Lane 2005.
See review by J Porritt http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2005/jan/15/society
3. Ibid.
Brian M. Fagan, The Little Ice Age: How Climate Made History 1300-1850, Basic Books 2000
Mackenzie Brown, The Fate of Greenlands Vikings, Archaeology, 28 February 2000.
4. Clive Ponting, A New Green History of the World, Vintage 2007

Glossary

In-depth

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2011 Population Matters

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