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The Carrying Capacity Dilemma: An Alternate Approach

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 June 2018

Brian Hayden
Brian Hayden*
Affiliation:
Simon Fraser University
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Extract

The practical problems involved in measuring and using “carrying capacity” have proven the concept to be deficient in theory, unrealistic in implementation, and impossible to measure. The concept should be abandoned or modified. It is suggested that the actual rates of morbidity and mortality due to resource deficiency and starvation are easier to measure and more accurately reflect the types of information which “carrying capacity” was meant to encompass. These measures can also accommodate the cyclical nature of resource availability which has rendered carrying capacity useless as a working concept. Emphasis is placed on “efficiency” of population maintenance at given levels.

Type
Research Article
Information
Memoirs of the Society for American Archaeology , Volume 30: Population Studies in Archaeology and Biological Anthropology: A Symposium , 1975 , pp. 11 - 21
Copyright
Copyright © Society for American Archaeology 1975

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