Another method of measur-ing population density is to
calculate the number of people per square kilometer or mile of
arable, or farmable, land. Us-ing this type of measurement,
known as physiologic density, a pattern differing form national
population density emerges.Countries such as Iceland and Egypt have high densities per
arable land since their amount of farmable land is low. Other
countries, such as appear to have low densities Kazakhstan,
because of large areas of ar-able land.National population density is a measure of the number of
people per square kilometer or mile at the country level. Us-
ing this type of measurement, some large countries. such as
the United States, appear to have uniformly high population
densities, even though vast areas of land may be sparsely
populated. Other countries, such as Russia, have a low
national density because of large rural areas, even though
they have large cities, such as Moscow.MEASURING NATIONAL DENSITY
MAPPING DENSITY
People are not settled evenly on
the planet. Some places such as
Monaco have a crowded 34,000
people per square kilometer,
while others such as Mongolia have a mere 2 people per square
kilometer. Concentrations are
seen in the cities and around
natural resources.ACCOUNTING FOR ARABLE LANDNG Maps
The human population
UÊ}ÕÀiÊÇ°£ä
Geographers approach the study of human
populations from a spatial perspective, asking why
density, distribution, resources, births, deaths,
and migrations vary from place to place. Earth’s
population, now above 7 billion, grows by 105
million per year, or 1.2 percent annually. The bulk
of the increase occurs in developing countries
in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Physiologic
density— the number of people per unit of
agricultural land—shows concentrations in Asia,
in particular in China and India; in Europe, from
Britain into Russia; along the eastern seaboard of
the United States; and in West Africa in Nigeria
and along the NIle Valley.
Find your location on the world map
showing population density. What is
the approximate population density
per square km in this area? Are there
other areas of the world with greater
population densities? Where?GLOBALLOCAL