3.5 Population Growth and Resource Availability

Explain how resource availability affects population growth.

• Population growth is limited by environmental factors, especially by the available resources and space.
• Resource availability and the total resource base are limited and finite over all scales of time.
• When the resources needed by a population for growth are abundant, population growth usually accelerates.
• When the resource base of a population shrinks, the increased potential for unequal distribution of resources will ultimately result in increased mortality, decreased fecundity, or both, resulting in population growth declining to, or below, carrying capacity.
• Enduring understanding ERT-3: Populations change over time in reaction to a variety of factors.