The number of people per unit area of arable land is termed as
- A.agricultural density
- B.arithmetic density
- C.physiological density
- D.economic density
Correct answer
Explanation
The correct answer is C, physiological density. Physiological density divides the total population by the area of arable or net cultivated land, showing how many people each unit of farmland must support.
Geographers use several measures of density. Arithmetic density, the most common, is total population divided by total area. Because much of a country may be desert, mountain or forest, physiological density gives a truer picture of pressure on food-producing land: Egypt, for example, has a modest arithmetic density but a very high physiological density, since almost everyone lives along the narrow, farmed Nile valley. Agricultural density is a narrower measure that counts only the farming population per unit of arable land.
Option A is wrong because agricultural density counts only the agricultural population, not all the people, on the farmland. Option B is wrong because arithmetic density uses the total land area, not just arable land. Option D is wrong because economic density relates population to the economic resources of an area rather than to its arable land.
Exam tip: Arithmetic = people/total area; physiological = people/arable land; agricultural = farmers/arable land.
Practice Questions
View allConsider the following statements : 1. Areas where rainfall exceeds 250 cm 2. Annual temperature 25°C - 27°C 3. Average humidity exceeds 75% 4. Trees do not shed the leaves To which one of the following types of vegetation does the above represent ?
- A.Tropical wet evergreen
- B.Tropical semi evergreen
- C.Tropical moist deciduous
- D.Tropical dry evergreen
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Very heavy rainfall, high and steady temperature, humidity above 75 per cent and trees that stay green all year are the marks of tropical wet evergreen forests.
Read the full explanation →In shifting cultivation, the ash of the burnt vegetation serves mainly as
- A.A pesticide
- B.A manure that supplies nutrients to the soil
- C.A weedicide that kills the forest roots
- D.A means of levelling the slope
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In slash-and-burn farming the felled trees and undergrowth are dried and burnt on the spot, and the ash left behind is rich in potash and other mineral nutrients, which the cultivator depends on because no chemical fertiliser or farmyard manure is used.
Read the full explanation →Mediterranean agriculture is particularly famous for which activity?
- A.Viticulture
- B.Dairy farming
- C.Shifting cultivation
- D.Commercial grain farming
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The Mediterranean climate, with its hot dry summer and mild wet winter, suits the vine better than almost any other region, and the lands around the Mediterranean sea, together with California, central Chile, the Cape region of South Africa and parts of southern Australia, are the world's great wine-producing areas…
Read the full explanation →The 'kolkhoz' of the former Soviet Union was an example of
- A.Cooperative farming
- B.Collective farming
- C.Plantation agriculture
- D.Market gardening
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The kolkhoz was the collective farm of the former Soviet Union, in which land, implements, livestock and labour were pooled and the farm worked under state direction with production targets fixed by the plan; the state farm, worked wholly by wage earners, was called the sovkhoz.
Read the full explanation →Intensive subsistence agriculture, marked by very small holdings, heavy use of manure and a high yield per hectare, is characteristic of
- A.The prairies of North America
- B.The monsoon lands of Asia
- C.The steppes of Eurasia
- D.The pampas of South America
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Where population is dense and holdings have been divided by inheritance over generations, as in India, China, Bangladesh, Vietnam and Indonesia, the farmer puts in abundant labour, manure and irrigation water on a tiny field and takes more than one crop a year.
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