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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 ecology corresponds to ...
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]
Many studies have tried to estimate the world's sustainable population for humans, that is, the maximum population the world can host. [5] A 2004 meta-analysis of 69 such studies from 1694 until 2001 found the average predicted maximum number of people the Earth would ever have was 7.7 billion people, with lower and upper meta-bounds at 0.65 and 9.8 billion people, respectively.
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 ...
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]
Georgescu-Roegen cautions that this situation is a major reason why the carrying capacity of Earth—that is, Earth's capacity to sustain human populations and consumption levels—is bound to decrease sometime in the future as Earth's finite stock of mineral resources is presently being extracted and put to use.
Human populations living in regions of high altitudes, such as the Tibetan Plateau, Ethiopia, and the Andes benefit from a mutation that enhances the concentration of oxygen in their blood. [2] This is achieved by having more capillaries, increasing their capacity for carrying oxygen. [3] This mutation is believed to be around 3,000 years old. [2]