A simple approach was used to evaluate the potential human population that the pre-industrial Icelandic environment could sustain. A model was constructed that simulated the population size according to potential biological production available for livestock. Biological production was determined by the extent of the total poten-tial vegetation cover based on the Degree-day concept. Fluctuations in the mean an-nual temperature cause changes in the potential vegetation cover and as a conse-quence change the biological production sustaining livestock and ultimately human population. The simulation's results indicate that the potential population that the environment could sustain during the pre-industrial period fluctuated around 40-80 thousand. The results further indicate that the severe land degradation experienced after the settlement period had a marginal impact on the population size. The pre-historical population did however overshoot the natural sustainability on few occa-sions.

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Date created

• 2005 July 17-2005 July 21

Type

• Document

Processing Activity

• Processing documentation available at: https://wiki.albany.edu/display/SCA/Processing+Ingested+Digital+Files

License

• Creative Commons BY-NC-ND Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 4.0 International

  
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ITEM CONTEXT

Part of

cc5bb0ac12a5b68b26b1583548898dae

Scope and Contents

Part of

3c582e6f5cf305ef0030c7471b499022

Scope and Contents

Part of

23d738ba88f8333bc39725f9cb5bd0b8

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Collection

System Dynamic Society Records

Scope and Contents

Collecting area

• This collection is part of the University Archives