Chapter 7:Responses to rising demand for land (Increasing supply of land and Conservation)

Hi guys,

Here is a re-cap on the last bit of Chapter 7: Responses to rising demand for land

Besides, increasing the price, which I have touched about on the concept of Price mechanism, below are the two other ways to meet the rising demand for land.

Increasing the supply of land:

1) Land Clearance: Clearing forests and demolishing buildings

2) Land Reclamation: Landfill method, Empoldering, reclaiming derelict land

3)Maximising existing landuse: Maxmising urban landuse (mixing urban landuse and high density building)

Mixing urban landuse (examples: Sengkang and Jurong)

High density building

Conservation of land

1) Nature parks, wetlands or in general other green spaces.

Chaper 7: Land Reclamation ( 3 methods)

In class, I have gone through with you that land reclamation is the creation of dry land from an area covered by water. Land reclamation can also refer to the process of recovering land that is damaged and abandoned and making it usable again.

There are three major methods that for land reclamation:

1)Landfill: create land by draining waterlogged areas such as swamps and marshes and filling them with material like sand to form dry land.

2) Empoldering: method of creating land from the sea through the use of polders.

3) Reclaiming derelict land:

-->Poor farming practices:

1) Through usage of fertilizers.

2) Letting the land lie fallow.

-->Mining activities:

1)Spoil banks have to be levelled

2)Mining pools filled.

3)Chemicals can be introduced to treat acidic soil

4)Vegetation planted to prevent soil erosion.

Chapter 7:Land Supply (Responses to limited land supply)

I moved on to the ways in which we can increase land supply or to solve land supply problems.

They are:

1)Increasing price of land

2)Increasing supply of land

3)Conserving land.

1) INCREASING PRICE OF LAND

For increasing price of land, the concept that surrounds this is price mechanism and is about the demand and supply graph as shown below:

Second way is to increase supply of land and related to Chapter 4 on Agriculture where you learnt people clear the forest for land for settlement and agricultural purposes.

So two ways were demolishing old buildings and deforestation. The video below showed about deforestation in Brazil, at the Amazon rainforest and I told you to think about the negative effects that it brings besides being able to increase supply of land and that forests around the world are carbon sinks. Look at the video for re-cap and look at why deforestation is so rampant in Brazil, link it back to the concept of demand and supply too.

Possible impacts of deforestation:

1)Loss of biodiversity

2)Habitat degradation

3)Modified global climate (emission of CO2)

4)Social impact (indigenous people)

2) INCREASING SUPPLY OF LAND

Below was the video i showed about how Dubai is increasing their supply of land largely for tourism purposes.

Below are the satellite images that showed the growth of the islands of Dubai

Jan 1973-Barely much settlements seen

August 1990-Transport networks and settlements sighted

Oct 2006-Increase in settlement and transport networks and the growth of the Dubai islands

Images credited to : http://kuusanmaki.com/blog/?p=21

Chapter 7:Land Supply (Reasons for Land Constraint)

Hi guys,

For the past week, I started the lesson on land supply by using the newspaper game and had each of you represent as particular landuse (

be it for housing, settlement, factories etc) and you guys had to STRATEGIZE and plan how you could accommodate as much people as possible on the folded newspaper (which represented 30% of the Earth surface made up of land) w

ithout stepping out of it.

I told you all as you relate back the the topic, land supply is limited and there is a need for people to strategize on how to best use the piece of land as there is not only limited land supply, there is also a rising demand of it due to mainly the increasing population growth of the world.

The important concept that reflects about land constraint is this: CARRYING CAPACITY.

Carrying Capacity is the maximum number of people an area can support comfortably

without straining its supply of resources for future use.