Talk:Carrying capacity

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Contents 1 Definition 2 Human Differences 3 Logistic curve 4 Major Edit coming up 5 Extraneous sentence 6 Article request/guidelines 7 Carrying capacity 8 Problems with Critiques 9 This part of the article is wrong 10 No it is not 11 Modelling and Ecological Applications of carrying capacity

[edit] Definition

First, environmental carrying capacity is not a number. It can only be a number in theory, and then only represented by a variable, K. In the real world, carrying capacity is a complex interaction of environmental factors that vary from year to year, so I suppose that we could next discuss the correct and relevant time scale for determining the number. In any case, carrying capacity is not a constant, and varies from time to time and place to place. Second, taking this into account, it is not necessary to have birth or death rates increase or decline in order to reach it. This may happen in extremely controlled experiments such as are reported in introductory ecology text books, but not in real life. Third, any species that has the ability to lower its carrying capacity in nature either has done so to the point where they no longer exist, or only exists by escaping into uncolonized patches of habitat. Certainly humans are not the only species capable of changing their own carrying capacity, either up or down. To assert this is to claim more place for humans than is our due. I could go on... Avram Primack

This page should link to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexual_selection , which provides additional information on r-Selection and K-selection. -- Nick Gall (nick.gall@metagroup.com)

"Humans are the only species known to possess the ability to increase their carrying capacity." This isn't really true, as the Gaia Hypothesis states that all life tends to improve the chances for continuation of life (thus increasing carrying capacity... right?) -booyabazooka

As I understand it, if carrying capacity is the ability of an evironment to support a population, then humans have demonstrated a unique ability to dramatically increase the carrying capacity of their environment by:

a: the development of agriculture

b: the domestication of other species and elimination\control of natural predators

c: most recently through the massive appliction of so-called 'fossil fuel' energy sources that had been sequestered as hydrocarbon deposits, which would have been otherwise unavailable without the application of human tools.

Should this be confused with the Darwinian concept of natural selection where one species gains an advantage over another species in the competition for resources? That's a debate that's probably best left for another page...

-jerry mcmanus

Humans increase carrying capacity primarily by (1) applying technology to food production (at the simplest level, putting manure in the field to fertilize the crops) so that the productivity of a given piece of land increases and (2) transporting food over distances so that people can live in places where food is not produced or not produced in adequate amounts to support the population living there (e.g., Manhattan). I assume when you refer to fossil fuels you're referring to part (2).

I came to this page to say that I'm deleting the comment about white tailed deer and eugenics since it is not NPOV. Perhaps it would be better suited to a page (or a whole other website) about (or for) proponents of eugenics, i.e., Nazis. Vcrs 21:28, 7 August 2006 (UTC)

Okay, I've calmed down now and while I did remove the comment, I changed what I had written to make it more NPOV, since admittedly my original formulation was anti-eugenics and therefore not NPOV either. I tried to make it more general and lay out some different reasons (including those I don't agree with) why people might prefer to frame sustainability discussionsin other ways than population.

Vcrs 22:25, 7 August 2006 (UTC)

Don'ts beavers also increase the carrying capacity? Then there are those ants that raise aphids. So humans arn't alone in raising carrying capacity.

[edit] Human Differences

Humans are the only animals that kill their competiors. That takes us outside the realm of natural selection. That begins artifical selection. What is left out of the human ability to increase carrying capacity for our own species, is our near total lack of concern for the animals whose habitat we destroy.

So it could be argued that we don't increase the actual carrying capacity at all, we just shift it to the crops we enjoy. If the deer that were in the area before the farm came along, happen to like our corn crop, we simply shot them as well. Hence increasing the monoculture, and make it more possible for locust (for example) to alter the carrying capacity to their benefit. Sounds like Human carrying capacity should be added to the article.

Restated from the book Ishmael by Daniel Quinn

--Lee Wells 03:34, 18 June 2006 (UTC)

That argues that human population dynamics are best modeled by some set of Lotka-Volterra-like equations. Kim Bruning 09:17, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

see also (Lotka-Volterra_equation) for more clarity, before taking things N-dimensional. ;-) Kim Bruning 09:19, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

If you already come up with this great book by Daniel Quinn, then at least make it correct! Daniel Quinn doesn't say it's "humans", who "are the only animals that kill their competitors", but it's what he takes into calling the "Takers" (commonly known as "civilized"). For good reason, he singles out those he calls "Leavers" (people living in tribes, so called "primitives"). -- termi 23:10, 28. Dez. 2006 (CEST)

Given that this is a myth, does it really matter? Other species are known to attack & kill competition, both internal (same species) and external (other species) competiton. Given how long ago this was first recognized, if you must have examples...I suggest you google it. 71.76.235.161 01:07, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

If you want one, consider elephants. They are known to knock down whole woodlands just to create grasslands, which provide them with more food. There are very few things that are unique to humans. Richard001 01:23, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Logistic curve

Amazingly, the logistic curve is not mentioned here at all, even though carrying capacity is actually a property of that curve. :-P This is akin to not mentioning the greenhouse effect in an article on global warming, or forgetting to mention that earth is a planet. ;-) Kim Bruning 09:15, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

(And lotka-volterra can also have a carrying capacity for each participant, of course, I last did this stuff years ago. ) Kim Bruning 09:27, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

Maybe that's because the current state of Wikipedia contributions is so overburdened with the fear of copyright infringement that everyone is afraid of trying to upload the graph. [I know I am]

I tried to start a Human Carrying Capacity article and managed to upload the wonderful table put up by a university from Joel Cohen's book 'how many people can the earth support' it was 'found' illegal in less than a day. Since I was dumb enough to include the reference of where it came from it was found to be 'copyrighted' and therefore unusable -- even though i gave the copyright reference. yes it is a grave injustice not to include the curve in the article, i even know of a couple of websites that include the article, but why put it in if some yo-yo is going to pull it for fear of 'copyright infringement' then you get accused of trying to 'piss someone off' if you put it back.

welcome to the world of NPOV. Sucks doesn't it?
-Lee Wells 13:43, 30 July 2006 (UTC)
P.S. you are more than welcome to try and upload the graph if you are succussfully, maybe you can tell me how i can reupload the table I spoke of.

[edit] Major Edit coming up

Critiques of application to humans will be folded into humans for the VERY simple reason that carrying capacity is (as i understand it anyway) a NUMBER -- NOT A POLICY the 'forced sterilization' argument may have usefulness under Population control, (oh wait surprise it's already there!) but in any case references need to be included. This is supposed to be a reference tool, people can't find what they need if it's mislabeled. If anyone has any problems with this please discuss here. [a google search only turned up forced sterilization and carrying capacity in Wikipedia] that should tell you something.
Lee Wells 23:40, 24 August 2006 (UTC)
Completed. Rereading for about the fouth time it seems a little uneven, but I tried to group statements about the same idea in the same place. Statements that seemed obviously in error I tried to correct (like ecological footprint says nothing about population size),
Lee Wells 18:56, 4 September 2006 (UTC)

Seems like it's still full of opinions, or even more full of opinions than before. I was trying to incorporate various scholarly points of view; it seems like it's back to having just one point of view. This isn't appropriate for an encyclopedia. Make your own website if you want to just hammer home your point of view.

Some examples: "Abandoning the entire concept because... would be like..." is clearly an argument, not a reporting of fact--it belongs on this page, not in the entry. The comments about money certainly do not reflect any kind of scholarly consensus, and again, they are an argument--you even admit that you're over-simplifying. "This is not what carrying capacity is about," is your opinion. "Their inability to see the problem, blinds them to the ability to solve it," is just poetry.

In response to your comments above, there's no such thing as an apolitical number. What you count determines what you think is important, and vice versa. If I say I'm going to study poverty, I will get a very different conclusion if I study the number of dollars going into schools in poor neighborhoods, versus if I study the number of teen pregnancies in poor neighborhoods. Those are both "numbers" but they are also implicitly policies. You have to be careful and aware of all the implications of any number you use.

And, I didn't say carrying capacity would lead to forced sterilization--I used very careful language there.

It also now has grammar problems (sentences started with a lower-case letter, fragments, etc.)

I can't work on this right now and it seems like you're really determined to have it your way, so there's no point. Oh well. Have fun.

Vcrs 04:22, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Extraneous sentence

i have moved the following sentence not connected to any thought pattern to this talk page until someone can sort out its role (if any) in the subject article:

"Used in accordance with Fair use^[1]."

Anlace 18:21, 10 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Article request/guidelines

Hi - I've been resolving a dispute over this article over the past few weeks, and would like to present my recommendations for the article (or at elast those which are relevant) here. Note that they are only suggestions, but I'd hope that in time they'd serve to improve the article as a whole.

• Source all/as many as possible additions per WP:CITE and WP:V
• Most importantly, keep a Neutral Point of View
• Avoid weasel words
• Discuss major changes on article talk page
• Break "Critiques of Applications to humans" off into a sub section
• Clean up article as a whole, removing POV, SPAG errors and weasel words
• Perhaps add a "response to critiques" section, into which the counter arguements (fully sourced) against the critiques can go
• Discuss all major cahnges on this, the talk page
• It may also help to try out major changes in the article sandbox - Carrying capacity/temp

I hope this can help to bring this article forward, and make it a better resource for thouse who look for it. Please direct any repsonses to my comments here (or to my talk page). I will try to help out with these changes when I get time. Thanks Martinp23 19:45, 17 September 2006 (UTC)

This needs a NPOV tag added to it. Will go do that now... 71.76.235.161 01:07, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Carrying capacity

Carrying capacity is a term widely used in the field of tourism. Either this article can be made more specific or may be made generalised so as to include definitions in related fields.

i am skeptical of the value of adding other definitions since it s an open door to expand the article in different directions. the biological treatment is important to preserve in a pure form. besides wikipedia is not a disctionary and has no obligation to cover all menaings within one article. if the concept is important in tourism, why not start a new article called [[tourism (carrying capacity). the other factor to consider is that the tourism version is relatively new and specialized so that sourcing could be difficult. Anlace 15:30, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

Here is what Derrick Jensen, a great writer and philosophy says about carrying capacity in his talks: it's the number of a type of population that can be supported on one place. He comes up with all this mostly, because so many people say there are too many people on the planet. It's not only the number of people that's problematic here. As he says: you can have a billion dear on one small island and it won't be any problem as long as they don't eat or shit, but just stand. So the problem with any population is the amount of damage they do to the place they are living (humans, animals, plants and the landbase in general). Maybe, just as a suggestion, we could add this to the main page. I mean, at least Derrick's sort of "definition". I think it's short and makes it all clear in a simple way. As I say: just as a suggestion. -- termi 23:19, 28. Dez. 2006 (CEST)

Perhaps carrying capacity should be broken into GENERAL i.e. bandwith (even telephone wires have a 'carrying capacity') & BIOLOGICAL. Then again both are so similar, the GENERAL term sim & BIOLOGICAL serve to explain each other.

oppose the unsigned post above. this article should not be deleted with trivial uses in other applications. if you want to discuss bandwidth, go to that article. Anlace 04:02, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Problems with Critiques

Unfortunately THE EARTH IS FINITE and the author of this section fails to understand this SIMPLE point. Human migrations aren't possible across national boundaries anymore. Unfortunately the Earth is one large 'bounded space' which includes arable land which by ALL accounts is shrinking. Saying that carrying capacity doesn't apply to humans implys humans aren't animals thus they are immune from the law of evolution, and natural selection. [Thus this article discredits evolution, another term that is having enough problems in American public schools, without this 'Critique']

If Wikipedia editors feel that Critiques should be a seperate section, then I feel a 'response to critiques' is necessary. However I feel this solution would make the article less readable, so I'm asking for other ideas.
Lee Wells 21:57, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

whoever authored this section has a strong POV that flies in the face of facts. the mis-spellings are also a tip off to the intellectual origin. the whole section can be deleted until someone comes up with a better section. Anlace 04:06, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

Well I don't know if I fixed it to everyone's satisfaction or not but then again that's why Wikipedia has those [edit] links.
Lee Wells 15:46, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

I got rid of the point/counterpoint format, and removed the unsubstantiated claims of the original editor. I also deleted the last several points completely, as they were purely argumentative, and in some cases, even the responses were misguided. (1) It's a misapplication of Occam's razor to say a simplistic argument is superior. (2) It's a gross oversimplification to suggest Rwanda was caused by population pressure. (3)Carrying capacity is not the basis of evolution, but one of many selective pressures. People would be subject to carrying capacity even if they hadn't evolved, as long as they have to compete for finite resources. (After all, Malthus came before Darwin.) At any rate, the points to which these errors responded were purely philosophical and unsubstantiated, so I deleted both point and counterpoint in these instances. JoeFink (talk) 17:20, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] This part of the article is wrong

The article states: "If the average American today owned 40 acres of arable land, there would be about 11.3 million Americans, instead of over 300 million, conversely our living standard would be higher. Most Americans would probably be farmers"

That statement is false for two reasons.

First, farming productivity in the U.S. is high enough today so that only 2% of the population needs to be farmers. This is true, regardless of whether the U.S. has 11 million people, or 300 million people.

Secondly, a long time ago, when almost everyone worked on farms, the standard of living was lower, not higher. If everyone is working on a farm, then there would be no one to build washing machines, refrigerators, telephones, or light bulbs. Without these things, our standard of living would be lower, not higher. Grundle2600 19:15, 14 May 2007 (UTC)

I've removed this section; it seems to be off-topic and seems to abuse the numbers it cites in making its dubious claims. -- Beland 00:25, 26 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] No it is not

This part of the article is what makes it correct: One can also argue that if the United States of America have lost World War II if its population been that small compared to the rest of the world, so living sustainably when the rest of the world does not would have its drawbacks.

Notice the word SUSTAINABLY the reason that 2% of the American population is all that it takes to feed the rest of the United States is that it is done UNSUSTAINABLY the entire article is on CARRYING CAPACITY which by definition is what you mean by SUSTAINABILITY.

the only thing that is wrong with the statement is that it only implied sustainability a problem i will fix right now.
Lee Wells 02:26, 20 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Modelling and Ecological Applications of carrying capacity

Does anyone else here think it might be a good idea to inclue a bit of information of the use of carrying capacity in modelling? For one the theory of carrying capacity is applied widely in Applied Ecology and conservation though the use of population viability analysis etc. Surely this article is a little too centered on humans? --Philthemancunian 23:30, 5 October 2007 (UTC)