Description

Our exercise is designed to engage student interest in learning the exponential and logistic population growth models in ecology and environmental science by providing an active learning exercise that focuses on real data on human population growth over time.  Throughout the exercise, students are asked to pause to consider human-environment interactions, such as the spread of disease, conservation efforts, and economic models.  They will see how the population growth rate in humans has increased over time due to increases in birth rates, lowered mortality rates, an increased carrying capacity, and so forth.  This has led to exponential growth, but they will also learn that the world’s growth rate is slowing down and we may soon approach our carrying capacity.  They will consider the implications of these changes within their own lifetimes to drive home the point that human actions have huge consequences for the environment, but also can have major implications for society itself.  

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