PDS AP Environmental Science 8th Period 2010-11

*Note: We only got to spend a few minutes discussing this topic the last day before exams, so I am including this nice post by IanN from last year. There are two “Human Population Problems” that we discussed in class: The Annual Growth Rate (AGR) of a population is too high, leading to problems with overpopulation. The AGR [...]

Today in class we talked about the Demographic transition. We used this model to discuss how countries change over time to fit our four stages. The four stages were: Pre-Industrial: Countries without industry. Usually don’t have a centralized gov’t system (usually tribal). We didn’t find many (if any) countries that fit this stage. Transitional: These [...]

These are the notes on the different factors which can be responsible for raising or lowering the birth and death rate of a nation. If you have any questions regarding what is here, let me know! Rate of Natural Increase = CBR – CDR/10 = AGR % (ignoring migration) CBR/TFR/RF = Birth Factors: Infant mortality [...]

In class on Friday we began discussing human population. We started by watching this video that illustrated the human population growth since the beginning of recorded history: We just finished studying population ecology, how populations grow, and how they impact the environment and now we are moving into the human population and how it is [...]

The Isle Royale simulation in class points out the significance of free population growth, the presence of predators, and the availability of food in an ecosystem. The three simulations that we did focus on each of these and their effects on the populations of moose and wolves. Exercise 1 This exercise focused on the population [...]

Population biologists/ecologists rarely have the luxury of counting every organism in an ecosystem or biome, but they still have to try in order to monitor relative biodiversity or determine if a population is threatened or endangered.  Today we simulated a popular sampling technique known as mark and recapture.  While we used pretzel goldfish as tagged [...]

When thinking about population ecology, it is important to remember that populations evolve, not individuals. We’ve learned that populations do not operate independently of each other, but are connected and intertwined within communities. Therefore, we say that populations evolve together; they coevolve. In population ecology, there are 5 major relationships: predation mutualism commensalism competition parasitism [...]