Since the emergence of human beings, the population has been growing for two million years. Now, there are more than 7 billion people on the earth. We know that places where people settled generally have common characteristics such as flat terrain, good natural environment, and convenient transportation.
However, in some places, due to one reason or another, the population is not settled by people, and the population is sparse than the other. So, what are these places? Let's come and explore it!
I will first release several world population distribution maps to give you a general understanding of the world population distribution.
Areas with cold climate and high latitudes
This is a category of sparse population areas. In those places, the latitude is high and the climate is cold. In some places, the frozen soil layer is deep, and some are directly covered by ice sheets. In short, not only is the food scarce, but it is also very unfavorable for commercial trade, so naturally no one lives there. The most extreme example of places like
is Antarctica. The Antarctic point is on the Antarctic continent, the ice cap is more than 4,000 meters thick, and the temperature can be as low as nearly minus ninety degrees in the winter half a year. In this environment, the ice becomes very hard and the steel becomes very fragile. The rare gas radon has to condense into solid at this temperature. Not to mention people, they will freeze to death as soon as they leave.
The rest of the other places are in the northern hemisphere. In addition to Eastern European plains and Western Siberia, the rest of the places, including Canada, Alaska, Greenland , the northern side of Northern Europe, and Central Siberia and East Siberia , have become sparsely populated areas. Of course, the population of Western Siberia is far from "dense".
Canada, its population is concentrated on the narrow southern side, and almost no one settles on the north side.
Russia, it can also be seen from the figure that the number of towns in the Eastern European plains and Western Siberia is in sharp contrast with the eastern side.
Inland areas farther from the ocean
Such places are far away from the ocean, and are difficult to reach water vapor, have less precipitation, and have a large temperature difference between day and night. There, the climate is often temperate continental climate, and vegetation is often grasslands and deserts. It is concentrated in Asia, including Mongolian Plateau , Tulan Plain , Kazakh hills, and the northwest region of my country.
Mongolia is a country with a very sparse population, and its residents are very scattered.
Topographic map of 5 Stans in Central Asia, we can find that this place has a wide desert and the distribution of towns is very uneven.
The high terrain and mountainous areas
This is also a sparsely populated area. On the one hand, they are at higher altitudes, which makes them have lower temperatures and thinner atmospheres. , Qinghai-Tibet region, is an extreme example in this regard. Its air density is only half of the sea level, and most people will cause symptoms of plateau hypoxia as soon as they go up. On the other hand, most plateaus are rugged and are not conducive to transportation. This will increase the burden on residents' lives, and the probability of natural disasters is also higher than that in plain areas. There are many such examples, so I won’t list them.
Therefore, who is willing to stay in high and rugged plateau mountainous areas?
Qingtan area of China. The average altitude here is more than 4,000 meters, and the atmosphere is very thin.
This is a sparsely populated area in the United States, namely the Great Plateau and Rocky Mountain area.
Hot and dry tropical desert area
Observe the map and we will find that on the west side of the mainland near Tropic of Cancer, there are always deserts distributed. Why? It turns out that the subtropical high air pressure belt controls the sinking airflow and controls these areas. In fact, the subtropical high pressure zone affects every corner of the tropic region, and the east coast of the mainland is fine, because it produces the easterly wind, which takes away a lot of water vapor.
, and water vapor is difficult to enter from the west, so the temperature difference between the daytime liquid and very dry on the west side of regression line . When people go in, if there is no water supply, they will die in less than two days. Therefore, no one will be willing to stay in the desert.There are many places like
, including the huge Sahara Desert , which spans 11 countries, and the Atacama Desert , which has an average annual precipitation of only 0.1 mm and has no rain for 1983 years. In addition, there are similar tropical deserts on the southwest side of the United States, Mexico , Australia, Namibia , Arabian and other places.
Sahara Desert. It is the largest desert in the world, with an area comparable to that of the Australian continent and an almost inviolable forbidden area for life.
Arabian Peninsula is also distributed in many deserts. Among them, the Rubhali Desert spans four countries is the largest.
Australia's three major deserts. What’s amazing is that tropical deserts account for about half of the Australian continent.
The rainforest areas are hot and dangerous, and hilarious, and
Tropical rainforest is mostly distributed between 10 degrees north and south latitudes. The climate there is humid, with high temperatures and rainy all year round, and is mostly distributed in flat areas, and biological resources and freshwater resources are very rich. Originally, it could be inhabited. But why, it has become a sparse population? Two key points: one is that there are dangers everywhere, and the other is that the moisture is high, and the cut wounds are difficult to heal and easily lead to infection. Therefore, people no longer settled in the rainforest, although many of the modern human ancestors still lived in the rainforest.
These three places contain more than 70% of the world's tropical rainforests, which are (sorted by size): Amazon Plain , Congo Basin , Malay Islands . Of course, there are also some rainforests that "fly" near the tropic line, from the north to the east coast of Madagascar, and small rainforests are also distributed.
However, to be honest, these rainforests have great tourism value, but they are not livable.
Amazon Plain on the northwest side of Brazil. There, the world's largest water system flows, raising more than 40,000 tropical plants.
Greater Sunda Islands (part of the Malay Islands) schematic. Java Island is densely populated, while the other three large islands are filled with rainforests and residents are scattered.
【End】Above
, 5 types of sparse population areas are listed. They have different natural landscapes, but they: one thing is that they are not suitable for settlement. What do you think? You can post your opinions to the comment section!
