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Carrying capacity. The carrying capacity of an environment is the maximum population size of a biological species that can be sustained by that specific environment, given the food, habitat, water, and other resources available. The carrying capacity is defined as the environment 's maximal load, [clarification needed] which in population ...
The belief that global population levels will become too large to sustain is a point of contentious debate. Those who believe global human overpopulation to be a valid concern, argue that increased levels of resource consumption and pollution exceed the environment's carrying capacity, leading to population overshoot. [18]
The 1972 book The Limits to Growth discussed the limits to growth of society as a whole. This book included a computer-based model which predicted that the Earth would reach a carrying capacity of ten to fourteen billion people after some two hundred years, after which the human population would collapse. [7]
According to the Global Footprint Network's calculations, currently people use Earth's resources at approximately 171% of capacity. [27] This implies that humanity is well over Earth's human carrying capacity at current levels of affluence. According to the GFN: In 2023, Earth Overshoot Day fell on August 2nd. Earth Overshoot Day marks the date ...
The biocapacity or biological capacity of an ecosystem is an estimate of its production of certain biological materials such as natural resources, and its absorption and filtering of other materials such as carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. [1][2] Biocapacity is used together with ecological footprint as a method of measuring human impact on ...
William Robert Catton, Jr. (January 15, 1926 – January 5, 2015) was an American sociologist known for his scholarly work in environmental sociology and human ecology. [1] More broadly, Catton is known for his 1980 book, Overshoot: The Ecological Basis of Revolutionary Change, which is credited by younger generations of environmental scholars ...
In a population, carrying capacity is known as the maximum population size of the species that the environment can sustain, which is determined by resources available. In many classic population models, r is represented as the intrinsic growth rate, where K is the carrying capacity, and N0 is the initial population size. [5]
Earth Overshoot Day (EOD) is the calculated illustrative calendar date on which humanity's resource consumption for the year exceeds Earth ’s capacity to regenerate those resources that year. In 2024, it fell on August 1st. [2] The term "overshoot" represents the level by which human population's demand overshoots the sustainable amount of ...