Demographer Martha Farnsworth riche examines Population Dynamics in communities all around the United States, a nation that has a disproportionately large impact on the ecosystem. Dr. Riche population growth is heading towards some kind of stability as people replace themselves. But where its located and how they consume thats the issue for sustainability. Narrator demographer deborah balk combines demographic and spacial data to examine how vulnerable populations in the coastal regions of developing nations will be affected by Climate Change. Balk prior work has predominantly looked at the causes of Climate Change. This study asks, what will some of the consequences of Climate Change be, and what will those consequences be for human population and for human settlements . Narrator predicting future Population Trends will help policy makers plan mitigation strategies to ensure a better quality of life for coming generations and to protect our environnt. Martha farnsworth riche is the former director of the u. S. Census bureau, who was instrumental in designing the 2000 census. Dr. Riche demography is really the science of studying people or studying populations. In the strictest sense, it refers to studying the growth or the decline of populations in terms of, obviously, people being born, people dying, and then people moving in or moving away. Ople are the focus of policies. Theyre the focus of programs. Theyre the focus of advertising, entertainment, what have you. But theyre the common denominator. We dont have an ideology. We count and we place and we describe. Narrator in the United States, the population is measured by the u. S. Census. Every 10 years, the census counts the number of People Living in every household across the nation. Do this. Narrator the Census Bureau also conducts additional surveys on such topics as economics, housing, and health. Demographers use data compiled through the census and additional surveys to study Population Dynamics. A question that people have about the census is, why should we care . Dr. Riche what weve found that people cared about was what demographers do with the data. Probably the thing they care about most is disaster relief. When theres a big natural disaster, like the earthquake in california back in the 1990s, i think it was, or the hurricanes in florida, the relief agencies go straight to the Census Bureau. The Census Bureau right away provides data of how many people per block, how many housing units, what their addresses are here are the maps. Heres how many people you should expect to find. People also like the use of the census for figuring out where schools ould b whether we need junior highs or high schools. They like it very much for hospital planning, healthcare planning. And they also are aware that the government uses the data from the census for traffic planning what streets are oneway during rush hour, to help you get home faster. Thats the sort of thing people really appreciate. Narrator another valuable use for census data is its application to environmental science. Dr. Riche the census is a unique tool. Its the only kind of survey or datacollection enterprise that we or any country has that tells you how many people are where, and the how many and the where are equally important. Many environmentalists think that population growth is part of the sustainability issue for the United States. Thats a debatable assumption. It really comes back not to how many people, but to how they live and to how they use resources. One social scientist has calculated that everybody in the world, all 6. 5 billion people, could live and be sustained in the state of texas. Thats one extreme. I dont think id like to live in the state of texas with 6. 5 billion people. So it really comes down to how you define sustainability. Its a matter of tradeoffs. Narrator a question that scientists ask is, how can an increasing population live in a way that minimally impacts the environment . Dr. Riche for individual places, the question of how many and where really drives the sustainability issue. Quite naturally, as our pulation has grown, its put People Living and working in areas that might not have been considered salubrious or even viable 50 or 100 years ago. Thats particularly true in the sunbelt the part of the country thats the southern half because thats where weve been moving heavily since air conditioning came into being, starting after 1950. We see that in lowlying areas and new orleans is a great example we have People Living in places that are inundated by floods, by tornadoes. Same thing in florida, coast of texas. Weve seen all that. In the semiarid or arid southwest, we have people using water at unsustainable rates. E n running sprinklers to grow new englandstyle gardens . Thats a choice thats been made, but now were coming up against natural limits. Narrator the arid southwest is not the only area in the United States faced with Water Supplies reaching their natural limits. Cape cod, in the northeast, a region with relatively high precipitation, is experiencing its own sustainability issues. Cape cod is a location containing ecosystems unique to the new england region. With beautiful sandy beaches and a rich variety of natural habitats, including grasslands, wetlands, and woodlands, cape cod is one of the most attractive recreational areas in the nation for both tourists and permanent residents. Eichner i think, in general, the Cape Community is very aware that we live in a sensitive area. People come here because of its Natural Beauty and because of what it has to offer. And we need to take care of this environment. Narrator in recent years, cape cod has witnessed a large increase in its population. Stone from 1950 to current, the population has gone from about 50,000, 45,000 across cape cod to about 230,000 today. So its been one of the Fastest Growing areas in massachusetts. This is census data here showing the increase in population. More recently, the red colors are the areas that are growing fastest. Narrator brian dudley is an environmental engineer. His fieldwork contributes to the understanding of Water Quality degradation across the cape. Dudley as the population on the cape has increased, we have seen, obviously, a proliferation of development. There has been an increase in the amount of wastewater that is being generated and, as a result, an increase in the amount of nitrogen. And that has had a detrimental impact on a lot of resources, not the least of which are the embayments and estuaries on the cape, and part of the impact has been loss of eelgrass beds, which in turn means that we have loss of shellfish habitat, finfish habitat. Narrator inadequate treatment of human waste contributes to the increase in nitrogen levels. Eichner what were running into right now is that we are seeing the impact of the population increase and the limits of the available Wastewater Treatment technology that weve got. We get rid of our wastewater in the same system that we take our Drinking Water from. Were seeing Water Quality impacts in almost all of our surface waters, and that means both our salty estuaries and our freshwater ponds. The majority of those are falling into the category of being impaired. So, we have to balance how many people we have, and we also have to balance the technology that we use to treat the wastewater that we put back into the system. Narrator Eric Davidson investigates the levels of nitrogen from vehicle emissions, the significance of which is only now being studied. He arranges air samplers at different distances from roadways to trap nitrogen. The filters are then taken for analysis. Dr. Davidson weve learned through our research that the samplers nearest the road collect about five times as much nitrogen as the samplers nearest to me, further away from the road. This is about, oh, 150 yards from the road. Narrator before the study at the Woods Hole Research center, there was little understanding of the amount of nitrogen pollution coming from traffic. Stone because theres a limited amount of land area on cape cod, the number of new roads is not very large, so the roads are used more intensively, and roads that were designed for maybe 10,000 cars per day now have 20,000 and 25,000 cars per day. Theres really no place to build additional roads. Dr. Davidson business as usual is not really an option. Our economy is based upon having tourists wanting to come here and spend time here. Theyre not gonna come here if the estuaries are full of algae that smell rotten. So its extremely important, and were getting to a Tipping Point where we have to do something. And i think the same is true across the globe. Dudley we know that people are still gonna want to come to the cape and that growth is gonna continue, so what were really interested in trying to do is appropriately manage that growth. We believe that we can still save the habitat and that it isnt beyond a point of no return, and thats what were actively trying to do. Narrator by combining census data with physical Data Collected in field studies, scientists can increase the accuracy of their models and help planners and policy makers prepare for future growth. Dr. Riche what i do, essentially, is give people the base to look into the future, because we make connections between people and all these things that have costs. We will count how many people are driving s. U. V. S and how far theyre driving versus how many people are taking public transport, and then environmentalists or the right sort of discipline can put that together with the figures on fuel consumption and usage and really come up and see, where is the push point . Narrator one possible solution to the Environmental Impact of cape cods increasing population is a smart growth approach. Smart growth is a practice used in urban areas to avoid urban sprawl and to plan for longterm environmental sustainability. It aims to concentrate population growth in the inner city, leaving open areas relatively untouched. Stone we use a computer model that looks at road covers over two or three points in time and land cover change over two or three points in time. And then we can project out into the future the likelihood of change in those areas, as well, to using different types of approaches, whether its a smart growth approach, which minimizes the amount of land cleared, or whether its a noholdsbarred or businessasusualtype approach, which is uncontrolled development, basically. Narrator census Data Collected across the cape is an important tool used to predict the effect of a smart growth approach versus that of business as usual. Stone we have very good census data at the town level throughout all of massachusetts about where growth has occurred, and we are confident we know where its going to occur because its going to occur close to transportation corridors, and these corridors can be developed in a smart growth technique, clustering developments, or you can use sprawl, which is the way it has been done in the past. Sprawl, of course, is very landconsumptive. You can accommodate most of the population growth thats projected to occur by looking at some of the areas that are already developed and redeveloping some of these using the whole idea of smart growth. Dr. Riche certainly in my lifetime, the u. S. Population has tripled. People think that its because of immigration. Immigration accounts for maybe half of our annual population growth. Other people think its births because we have a higher fertility rate than other industrial countries, but were actually just replacing ourselves through birth. Probably the primary driver of our population growth is that we arent dying as young as we used to. That 300millionth person that the newspapers were trying to trace down, thinking that it was a baby born it wasnt a baby born. It was someone who died on a wednesday instead of tuesday. That was our 300millionth person. And thats a major source of our population growth. One demographer, joel cohen, from rockefeller university, a few years ago, looked at all the estimates made of population size and sustainability trying to answer the question, how many are too many . And it really came down to a huge array of estimates and depended on what kind of life you wanted. And thats what really goes into this equation. Its a matter of tradeoffs. Narrator while farnsworth riches research is based mainly in the United States, deborah balks studies have a predominantly global perspective. With 6. 5 billion people currently living on the planet, its estimated that World Population may peak at around 9. 1 billion inhe nex50 yrs. Scientists predict that Climate Change linked to greenhousegas emissions will lead to changes in the global environment, including a rise in ocean levels. In developing nations, the majority of population growth projected to take place in cities. Many of these cities are situated in lowlying coastal areas eas most at risk for clatechange effects. Balk we know Climate Change will lead to sealevel rise, and that, of course, will affect coastal dwellers more than others. But we also know that it will increase storm surges and flooding coastal in nature. In fact, we found that coastal ecosystems were disproportionately urban and disproportionately dense in both urban and rural areas. And therefore, we became particularly interested in trying to estimate the population and the urban population that would be at greater risk of the conseences of Climate Change. Narrator deborah balk incorporates spacial data and methods to assess population characteristics and behaviors. Balk theres a disproportionate contribution of the causes of Climate Change coming from one set of countries, mostly the west, and a disproportionate set of consequences, or burden, on countries that are predominantly poor. And it turns out that some of those countries are also the ones that will be experiencing the most rapid urbanization in the future. And much of that urbanization is going to occur, probably, in these coastal zones, and lowelevation coastal zones at that. Narrator before deborah balk and her team began their study, there was no accurate estimate of how many people live in coastal areas within a 10meter elevation above sea level. While no one expects ocean levels to rise 10 meters, its within this zone that Climate Change will have the most effect, in terms of flooding and storm surges from more frequent and more energetic coastal storms. Dr. Rumbaitis del rio the fact is that in asia, you have many situations where you have large urban areas in very vulnerable positions, and between both of those, you have the potential for a lot of damage. And if you take a city like dhaka that is located right on the coast and has a huge informal settlement population, with people that already dont have good access to sanitation and water systems, dont have good sewage systems, so when the city flooded in 2005, there were massive deaths. When you think about floods becoming more frequent, its a real problem. Narrator balks team started their studies by collecting census data created in countries across the world. On this map of the dominican republic, irregular red lines surround subnational administrative units for which census data is available. One problem for balks team is how to reconcile these data with precise gridformat satellite data, shown here in blue. To obtain boundaries of urban areas, a third source of information was used nighttime images of the earth from space. Balk noaa produces a nighttime lights data set that was measured in 1994 and 1995, and its a globally consistent data set. That means they use the same measures everywhere. It measures brightness of places. We combined the lights data with the population data, as well as a few other data sets, to make sure that we can confirm each light is actually a population place. Narrator using a combination of various population and geographic data sets, balk is able to determine how many people live in lowelevation coastal zones. Balk this is southern vietnam. So, we see the white areas are administrative boundaries. The red areas indicate the nighttime lights the urban areas. And this blue data set is the elevation zone that weve constructed from the srtm data Shuttle Radar Topography Mission elevation data set. So, we have Ho Chi Minh City here. Thats the big red area. And well now add the elevation buffer. The areas that remain bright red are above 10 meters, and all other areas right here where the blue has overtaken it is below 10 meters, and its evident that the entire city is not below 10 meters, but much of it is. This notion of combining these different types of data at these fine resolution is an innovation, and its an important one for effecting policy, because without data of this type, you cant come up with estimates that are accurate. Narrator as part of the worldwide effort, projections for oceanlevel rise have been made for the new york metropolitan area, home to approximately 20 Million People. Balk as i was doing this research, since were in new york, many people said, well, is my home gonna be flooded in the next 100 years . Is this Community Going to be gone . And so forth. And therefore, i became interested in coming up with estimates for new york city. Narrator all five boroughs of new york contain dense populations within the lowelevation coastal zone. Balk this is the distribution of population. The darker the color the more dense the population. So, this is at five meters. Now seven meters. And now 10 meters. Narrator in new york, storm surges reach three meters above sea level about once a century. These 100year storms cause severe flooding and damage in coastal areas, endangering essential infrastructure such as power stations and watertreatment facilities. Models predict that Climate Change may reduce the average interval between these socalled 100year storms to once every 19 years by midcentury and possibly as often as every 4 years by 2080. One new yorker raising awareness of the potential impact of clima chang is artiseve mosher. All right, lets go for a walk. Mosher im working on a pubc art project called the high waterline project, and for the project, im drawing the 10footabovesealevel line around the eire coast of brooklyn and lower manhattan, so its almost 70 miles that im covering. And the point of the project is to get out into the communities that are gonna be affected by tha and give them a visual idea of what that means what the 10footabovesealevel line means and also give them the tools to do something about that. So, along my way, im handing out action packets that give people tips on how to live more sustainably. A really important part of my project is the whole human element. I think a lot of times, they dont know, okay, Climate Change first of all, what does that mean . And then, what do i do about it . So, you have the media scaring you into thinking, Climate Change we just cant do anything about it. We should all panic and run away to higher ground. But there are things we can do about it. So, its nice to be able to get out and talk to people. And ive found that no matter what background, noter where people come from, theyre all really interested in talking about it, because they do understand that it is a future that could happen in our neighborhoods or in the neighborhoods that im in. This area most likely is where the flood would appear . Yeah, it wouldom this y. The paerdegat would overflow the basin over there. Yeah. You would get flooded in this area here. It happened in coney island a couple years ago. Yeah, coney islands extmely susceptible to flooding. And thats gonna be a big deal because the whole coastline of new yo city is gonna change. Thank you for your advice. Thanks for stopping. Yeah. I hope he feels better. Thank you very much. One of the things that i did also discover when i was mapping out the line is tt there e a t of Public Housing along the coast, and currently you have a lot of poor People Living in the coastal counities, so theyre the ones who are really gonna be affected by this, which is similar to things in the rest of the world, where bangladesh is a very poor country thats very susceptible to Climate Change and flooding. Narrator with many of the worlds poor and disadvantaged living in endangered coastal zones, planning for the future is becoming critical. Dr. Rumbaitis del rio new york city is one example where the mayor is starting to think about Climate Change, both in terms of cutting Greenhouse Gases and making the city more livable but also coping with some of the dangers of Climate Change. The issue is that its not just new york city that needs to be taking this on. Its really all cities, both large and small. So, theres a lot of planning work and learning that needs to be done. And i think its important for Global Leaders to start taking the lead on this issue and understanding that people are at risk, even if theyre living in the developed world, but particularly in the developing world where resources are less, where the poor are more vulnerable and dependent on faulty infrastructures to begin with, where the potential for really catastrophic situations to occur are very likely. Narrator deborah balks study has determined that more than 600 Million People worldwide live within the 10meter lowelevation coastal zone, with more than half concentrated in highly populated urban areas. Balk one of the things that we learned in this study was that the lowelevation coastal zone in some areas, bangladesh and china being two examples, is urbanizing at a much faster rate than we see elsewhere in those countries. Those estimates are going to be fundamentally important to policy makers and to future studies that will allow us to consider future rates of urbanization, whos gonna live where. Hopefully in the future, we can also ask more about the characteristics of People Living in these various places. And i think this pioneering approach that weve opted offers a lot of promise for coming up with much more rirous estimates and descriptions of current population, future population, current environmental conditions, and future environmental conditions. Funding for this program is provided by annenberg media. For information about this and other annenberg media programs, call. And visit us at. Funding for this program was provided by