A Quantitative Assessment of Buffers among Temperature Variations, Livestock, and the Human Population of Iceland, 1784 to 1900

Vasey, Daniel E.

doi:10.1007/978-94-017-3352-6_12

Cited by 8 publications

(9 citation statements)

References 16 publications

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“…Vasey (2001) uses temperature (as a proxy for grass growth) to represent land carrying capacity in a marginal environment. Inspired by his work, K t was substituted with our temperature composite in Eq.…”

Section: Temperature Change Agricultural Production and Population mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…They emphasize that human adaptability to long-run change should not be underestimated. Even in marginal areas, a population that relied on farming in a difficult climate did have some buffers to guard against climatic fluctuations (Vasey 2001). Instead of climatic forcing, other socioeconomic factors such as real wages (Lee 1985(Lee , 1987(Lee , 1993Lee and Anderson 2002), grain prices (Scott et al 1998;Duncan et al 2001;Duncan and Scott 2004), the level of adaptive specialization of economic development (Chu and Tai 2001), and combinations thereof have been suggested as the major stimuli for historical population growth.…”

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confidence: 99%

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Climatic change and Chinese population growth dynamics over the last millennium

2007

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The climate-population relationship has long been conceived. Although the topic has been repeatedly investigated, most of the related works are Eurocentric or qualitative. Consequently, the relationship between climate and population remains ambiguous. In this study, fine-grained temperature reconstructions and historical population data sets have been employed to statistically test a hypothesized relationship between temperature change and population growth (i.e., cooling associated with below average population growth) in China over the past millennium. The important results were: (1) Long-term temperature change significantly determined the population growth dynamics of China. However, spatial variation existed, whilst population growth in Central China was shown to be responsive to both long-and short-term temperature changes; in marginal areas, population growth was only sensitive to short-term temperature fluctuations. (2) Temporally, the temperature-population relationship was obscured in some periods, which was attributable to the factors of drought and social buffers. In summary, a temperature-population relationship was mediated by geographic factors, the aridity threshold, and social factors. Given the upcoming threat posed by climate change to human societies, this study seeks to improve our knowledge and understanding of the climate-society relationship.

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Section: Temperature Change Agricultural Production and Population mentioning

confidence: 99%

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confidence: 99%

Climatic change and Chinese population growth dynamics over the last millennium

2007

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“…Vasey (2001) and Haraldsson & Ólafsdóttir (2006) use temperature as a proxy for potential biological production available for livestock to estimate land carrying capacity. Inspired by their work, K t was substituted with the various climate composites in Eq.…”

Section: Applying the Logistic Modelmentioning

confidence: 99%

Temperature, aridity thresholds, and population growth dynamics in China over the last millennium

Lee

Zhang²,

Fok³

2009

Clim. Res.

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ABSTRACT:The relationship between climate and population has long been discussed, but rarely has it been quantitatively measured. Hence, the relationship remains ambiguous. In the present study, we employ fine-grained temperature, aridity threshold, and population data, together with logistic models and spatial statistics, to quantitatively explore how far climate change affected population growth dynamics in China from 1000 to 1979. Statistical results confirm that cold climate was associated with below average population growth, mediated by regional geographic contexts. In addition, cold climate triggered a southward shift of populations. In short, the climate-population relationship was evident in historical China, and temperature was more influential than the aridity threshold in explaining the fluctuation of population size and shifts in population distribution. The strong influence of temperature change on northward and southward population shifts and the weak influence of the change in the aridity threshold on population growth dynamics are further discussed. The observed temperature-population relationship may give some indication of future demographic effects from climate warming.

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“…Stresses of this type can be combated by buffering subsistence resources within the system (Vasey 2001). A community's buffering capacity may be seen as a parallel of ecological resilience (Adger 2000) – a system's ability to withstand environmental perturbations without a change in its dynamic equilibrium.…”

Section: A Retreat From the Margins?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Environmental determinism in Holocene research: causality or coincidence?

Coombes

Barber

2005

Area

174

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The past decade has seen a revival of environmental determinism in palaeoenvironmental research, with palaeoclimatic shifts implicated in the collapse of many past civilizations. Implicit in these studies is a belief that the observed cultural transitions can be causally related to the magnitude of climatic change. However, examination of the processes of these declines suggests that many exhibit patterns characteristic of complexity cascading within self‐organized systems. If so, the nonlinear nature of these systems’ responses to external forcing means that the assumption of causality in many of these cases should be considered questionable.

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A Quantitative Assessment of Buffers among Temperature Variations, Livestock, and the Human Population of Iceland, 1784 to 1900

Cited by 8 publications

References 16 publications

Climatic change and Chinese population growth dynamics over the last millennium

Climatic change and Chinese population growth dynamics over the last millennium

Temperature, aridity thresholds, and population growth dynamics in China over the last millennium

Environmental determinism in Holocene research: causality or coincidence?

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