LAND CARRYING CAPACITY GETh 409: LANDUSE PLANNING

AND DEVELOPMENT
LECTURE CONTENTS

What is carrying capacity?

What is population? What
How carrying capacity
are the factors of
affects the population
population change?
growth and change?

Whether land carrying How to calculate

capacity is static or agricultural land carrying
dynamic? capacity?
 POPULATION…?
a group of living things
all of the same species
living in a certain area
 Immigration
[+]

FACTORS THAT
AFFECTS Birth
Population
growth
Death

POPULATION [+]
processes
[-]

GROWTH…?
Emigration
[-]
TWO CLASSICAL HUMAN POPULATION GROWTH
THEORIES…

Fig 1. Malthusian theory Fig 2. Demographic transition theory

WHERE IS MIGRATION…??
o At global scale, there is no migration effects
o At local scale, there will be migration effects depending on inter-regional
equality in resources/opportunities distribution.
CARRYING CAPACITY
The maximum population size a certain environment (or land) can support for an
extended period.
FACTORS AFFECTING

Environmental
Competition for
degradations and
resources
diseases

Natural disasters Innovations

HOW TO CALCULATE CARRYING CAPACITY OF
LAND…?
o Generally, CCL is the ratio of total output (or production) from any land unit
and the per capita production requirement.
HOW TO CALCULATE CARRYING CAPACITY OF
LAND…?
However, the identification of land
carrying capacity of an area is not as
simple as mentioned in the earlier
statement. For example – In an area,
people produce several types of
agricultural crops. The quantity and the
production values are not same across
the crops and thus the calculation of
total output becomes more complex.
On the other hand, people consume
different types of product and thus the
consumption needs to be standardized.