BIOS 105 - Environmental Biology Ð Dr.
Stephen Malcolm.
Research Exercise
For 200 points:
Please research human population size and density in at least one developing country and at least one developed, post-industrial country and examine the effects that human population density (number of people/country area) might have on the resources available to individuals and the ÒhealthÓ of individuals. Health can include medical, psychological, environmental, ethical or social considerations.
Your
research should examine the following null hypothesis:
Ho: human
population density has no effect on either per capita resource availability, or per
capita health.
Your
alternative hypotheses could be:
H1: high human
population density has a positive effect on per capita resource availability, and per capita health.
H2: human population
density has a negative effect on per capita resource availability, and per capita health.
Please work in groups of 3 (approximately) and
produce a PowerPoint presentation of your research that will take approximately
15 minutes to present orally (about 15 slides) on 30 November 2004. This presentation should be informative
and entertaining and data should be illustrated graphically or in tables. You should also explain your research
methods and reach a conclusion based on your analysis of the data you have
collected. Each person in your
group will receive the same score for this exercise, so please cooperate with
each other.
Please also make your PowerPoint presentation available to the class, either by making copies yourselves or giving an electronic copy of your presentation to Dr. Malcolm so that he can make copies for the class Ð thanks!
You are welcome to use www resources as well as library resources (current
holdings, electronic holdings and databases). You can use graphs, data or figures from other sources as
long as they are fully acknowledged and referenced. It may be a good idea to look at data series through time to
assess how populations and per capita well-being have changed in both more-developed countries (MDCs) and
less-developed countries (LDCs).
You can also ask questions; such as, Òis there a carrying capacity
for human populations?Ó or Òis
there any evidence that any human populations have reached a carrying
capacity?Ó You can also address issues such as
common property resources and competition for these resources or any other
biological concept that you think is relevant.
|
Category
|
Score |
|
1. Content
and presentation (general overview) /40 (relevance
of topic to assignment and delivery) |
|
|
2. Hypotheses
and logic of organization /40 (significance
of argument) |
|
|
3. Quality
of data collected and methods used /40 (use
of sources, citations) |
|
|
4. Analysis
of data and presentation of results /40 (use
of graphs & tables & other comparisons of data) |
|
|
5. Conclusions
reached /40 |
|
Total score /200
|
|
Research groups:
Group 1:
Group 2:
Group 3:
Group 4: