Visualizing Environmental Science

(Marvins-Underground-K-12) #1
Graphing Appendix 471

Year

Million metric tons of seafood

0

50

100

150

200

1950 1960 1970 1980 1990 2000 2010 2020

Aquaculture production

World seafood harvest, 1950–2012

Wild catch

FAO State of World Fisheries and Aquaculture (2012).

    




 




 





 
 



  
 



Urban

Rural Urban Urban

Rural

Rural

Ethiopia Turkey France

Based on data from Population Reference Bureau.

Figure A.10

Urbanization varies from one country to
another. Which countries are mostly urban? Which countries
are mostly rural?

Think Critically


  1. Which of the four pollutants illustrated in the bar
    graphs below shows the greatest decline from
    Location 1 to Location 2? Suppose a scientist
    hypothesized that the overall level of air pollution
    at Location 2 will be lower than at Location 1. Do
    the data presented in these bar graphs support this
    hypothesis? Why or why not?
    2. Study the line graph below, then devise two original
    questions that further explore some aspect of the
    patterns revealed by this graph. What would you
    hypothesize the answer to each of your questions
    will be, and why? What data would you collect to
    investigate your questions and test your hypotheses,
    and how would you graph each of these data sets?


associated with high urbanization rates because there is
nowhere else for all those people to go. However, others
might hypothesize that high population growth rates are
associated with low urbanization rates because people in
urban areas tend to have fewer children than people in
rural areas.
To investigate this question, we could collect urban-
ization and population growth data for different areas
within a given country, across many different countries,
or both. In each case, we could visualize these data by
constructing a line graph with “population growth rate”
(the independent variable) on the x-axis and “urbaniza-
tion (the dependent variable) on the y-axis. If the line
connecting the data points on this graph ran uphill, we
would conclude that urbanization appears to increase
with population. Conversely, if this line ran downhill, we
would conclude that urbanization appears to decrease
with population growth. If the line was flat, we would
conclude that there is no consistent relationship be-
tween population growth and urbanization.

related to the material presented in this chapter. For in-
stance, we could ask whether the amount of urbanization
depends on the rate of human population growth. Some
might hypothesize that high population growth rates are
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