The initial web site contained a collection of five literature reviews done to understand the global magnitude of the loss and degradation of some of the earth's key life-support systems. These reviews were later used in an analysis of the sustainability of the global outputs of food, wood and freshwater, and also to compile a lot of land area and aquatic area data.  That motivated an analysis of what the earth's carrying capacity is, based purely on the productivity of the bottom of the food chain - the process of photosynthesis (neglecting other constraints such as fossil fuels, living space, etc.) 

You might benefit from first looking over the file "Highlights of this Website." That file briefly describes what each of the 20 major documents on this website is about.  It also points out some of the more important conclusions of the analyses done in that document.  This information may help you decide if any given document is likely to be useful for whatever purposes you had in mind. 

Below are 12 fairly substantial analyses related to the broader issue of Mankind's efforts to deal with the limits that the lands and the seas impose on human numbers in an age of exploding mobilities of all components of economic activity -- and efforts to deal with these limits in a bipolar global economy.

Also, you will find two analyses of issues unrelated to those above. They are aimed at solving the health care crisis in a more bi-partisan manner than those that we normally encounter, i.e. by seeking ways of eliminating the massive inefficiencies that have crept into the system over the years. 

Even though the initial five documents in this web site limited themselves to categorized compilations of key facts and figures and brief summaries of arguments and analyses, the total size of these five initial documents plus all the more recent additions to this website has grown to be equivalent to over 1000 pages of 8.5x11 single-spaced hard copy.  Yet they cover only a small fraction of the global literature on these issues.  They are big enough to be quite useful, but you, the user, should keep the scope limitations of this site in mind. There are no graphics in this website since it is assumed that the site visitor is primarily interested in collecting referenced information as rapidly as possible.

The above-mentioned five review documents contain a huge amount of data on areas of various types of land and aquatic habitats (e.g. the area of Russia's boreal forests, the amount of rangeland in the world, the area of coral reefs in the Indian Ocean, the amount of Latin American tropical rainforests converted to grazing land, the amount of desert land in China, the total area of the world's lakes). Those who make use of this sort of data may find it convenient to have all this data collected in one place rather than having to search for it throughout the five above-mentioned documents. If you find this sort of data useful, you can simply click on the link "Land Area Data and Aquatic Area Data -- A Compilation" that you will find below.

As another application of the above, a document has been prepared that presents the case for greater U.S. support for international family planning.  As part of that document, an Appendix A ("Overpopulation in Developing Nations . . .") has been prepared that uses the above five literature reviews to present the case for the contention that the developing world is over-populated. "Globalization: The Convergence Issue" was added in January of 2003 to point up the growing interconnectedness of the developed- and developing worlds -- and the implications thereof.

Titles and sizes of (and links to) the documents listed above are given below (Last updated 9/6/08):

INDEX OF COMPONENT DOCUMENTS: as of 9/07/08
Topsoil Loss and Degradation -- Causes, Effects, and Implications: A Global Perspective
Edition 7, July 2007 (2709 KB as 17 WORD 2000 files; 1520 KB as 17 *.html files)
Forest Land Degradation -- A Global Perspective
Edition 6, July 2007 (1924 KB as 12 WORD 2000 files; 915 KB as 12 *.html files)
Grazing Lands Degradation -- A Global Perspective
Edition 6, July 2007 (1431 KB as 9 WORD 2000 files; 807 KB as 9 *.html files)
Irrigated Lands Degradation -- A Global Perspective
Edition 5, July 2007 ( 1191 KB as 10 WORD 2000 files; 655 KB as 10 *.html files)
Fishery Degradation -- A Global Perspective 
Edition 8, July 2007 (1735 KB as 13 WORD 2000 files; 919 KB as 13 *.html files)
Total: 8990 KB as 61 WORD 2000 files; 4816 KB as 61 *.html files)
Sustainability of the World's Outputs of Food, Wood and Freshwater for Human Consumption
Edition 1, March 2008 (1480 KB as 6 WORD 2000 files; 908 KB as 6 *.html files) 
The Food Crisis -- Some Solutions for a World with Fewer Options for Satisfying Increasing Demands 
Edition 2, September 2008 (170 KB as 1 WORD 2000 file; 134 KB as 1 *.html file)
Terra Preta -- An Inexpensive, if not Profitable, Solution to the Problems of Global Warming and Developing World Hunger 
Edition 1, September 2008 (84 KB as 1 WORD 2000 file; 60 KB as 1 *.html file)
Human Co-Option of Net Primary Production - The Photosynthetic Limits to Global Carrying Capacity 
Edition 2, April 2008 (89 KB as 1 WORD 2000 file; 56 KB as 1 *.html file)
Land Area Data and Aquatic Area Data -- A Compilation 
Edition 1, March 2004 (976 KB as 10 WORD 2000 files; 441 KB as 10 *.html files)

The Controversy over U.S. Support for International Family Planning -- An Analysis 
Edition 8, April 2008 (367 KB as 3 WORD 2000 files; 235 KB as 3 *.html files) 
Could Family Planning Cure Terrorism?
Edition 7, March 2008 (337 KB as one WORD 2000 file: 187 KB as 1 *.html file)
The Muslim World's Changing Views Toward Family Planning and Contraception and Contraception 
Edition 2, March 2008 (71 KB as one WORD 2000 File: 29 KB as 1 *.html file)
Quinacrine Sterilization: The Controversy and the Potential 
Edition 1, January 2007 (113 KB as one WORD 2000 file: 58 KB as 1 *.html file)
Strategies for Funding Family Planning, Maternal Health Care, and Battles Against HIV/ AIDS in Developing Nations as Options Expand, Political Environments Shift and Needs Grow: A Critique 
Edition 4, August 2007 (248 KB as 2 WORD 2000 files: 159 KB as 2 *.html files)

Globalization: The Convergence Issue 
Edition 16, April 2008 (1088 KB as 5 WORD 2000 files: 688 KB as 5 *.html files)
Globalization: A Review of the Literature 
Edition 3, May 2008 (1490 KB as 11 WORD 2000 files: 842 KB as 11 *.html files)
Globalization: The Outsourcing - Insourcing Issue 
Edition 2, June 2006 (77 KB as 1 WORD 2000 file: 35 KB as 1 *.html file)
The Informal Economy of the Developing World: The Context, the Prognosis, and a Broader Perspective
Edition 1, MARCH 2008 (231 KB as 1 WORD 2000 file: 174 KB as 1 *.html file)
Privatization of the World's Water Supplies and Other Public Utilities and Infrastructure
Edition 1, APRIL 2008 (67 KB as 1 WORD 2000 file: 36 KB as 1 *.html file)

Inefficiencies in the U.S. Health Care System -- Identifying and Fixing Them 
Edition 3, August 2004 (87 KB) (No particular relevance to other topics covered by this web site) 
Large-Scale Computerization --the Cure for the Health Care Crisis 
Edition 4, May 2006 (86 KB) (Chapter 3 of the above document) 

NOTE: You may prefer to examine one or more of the above documents as word processing documents on your own computer. You can request these from the author by filling in the form below and submitting it. You will receive the documents that you requested as word processing documents sent by Email attached files. This service is free. 

I am often asked about the origin of this website and about the author. To learn more about either of these, or about plans to expand on this web site click on About this website and its author. 

Website Background:  The background for all files of this website was borrowed from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.  If you decide to use it on your website you should acknowledge them as the source. 

since 01/04/03

Abstract of "The Controversy over US Support for International Family Planning -- An Analysis": 
The growing contentiousness over U.S. support for international family planning (IFP) is traced to the broadening of the issue to include increased educational and economic opportunities for women in developing nations and growing concerns that over-population and excessive population growth rates are at the roots of the growing social, economic, political, and military instabilities in the developing world. Since these concerns tend to promote increased access to abortion and contraception, supporting IFP has grown less bipartisan and more contentious. Arguments used by opponents of IFP are analyzed. The economics of IFP are examined and the case is made that just the financial benefits of IFP outweigh the costs by orders of magnitude – for both the developed world and the developing world. Much of the wretchedness found in developing nations can be traced to the needs for capital (over $1.0 trillion/ year) required by population growth. The conversion of labor-intensive agriculture to capital-intensive agriculture in developing nations adds significantly to population-driven migrations to marginal lands and urban slums. This problem can also be traced to capital deficiencies caused by population growth. This problem also adds to the growing social, economic, political and military instabilities of the developing world.

Abstract of "Globalization: The Convergence Issue": 
No significant non-mobile factors exist that could prevent convergence of the economies of the developed and developing worlds and the corresponding elimination of high labor price differentials.  Although some global convergence of labor prices has occurred, the bulk of this convergence must result from some sort of rapid, instability-related process. The developing world’s extreme shortages of financial capital, caused largely by high population growth rates, and limitations of the world’s natural capital require that labor prices converge close to those of the current developing world. Damage control options exist but are limited, difficult, and require a time frame of decades.

Abstract of "Inefficiencies in The U.S. Health Care Industry -- Identifying and Fixing them":
Despite health care’s huge and ever increasing bite out of the U.S. GDP, stop-gap, increasingly inefficient, and largely symptomatic measures have characterized the bulk of the nation’s response. Eventually the desperation and anger over the failure to adequately address these cost containment problems at both the private and government levels are likely to force serious examinations of the fundamental roots of the problem. This paper is intended as preparation for that eventuality. The two most fundamental causes of the problem are ever-increasing, self-perpetuating, subsidies and impositions of insurers between buyers and sellers. These causes seem impossible to correct. But by addressing the largest (and most rapidly growing) inefficiencies in the health care system, four other fundamental approaches appear to offer significant potentials for major reductions in health care costs of roughly 50%. These approaches also offer significant potentials for improvements in health care quality in addition to collateral benefits. These approaches are:

1. Decreasing the direct labor component of health care via computerization of its massive, complex information flow/ analysis system,
2. Increasing direct capital utilization efficiencies by reducing the influence of the less-than-objective economic analyses, and possibly the social values, that have produced huge and growing direct capital utilization inefficiencies,
3. Reducing prescription drug prices by any of several systems of pricing that mimic free-market conditions – conditions that the present pricing system lacks, and
4. Reducing government support for questionable end-of-life health care borne of less-than-objective medical, personal and religion-based analyses.

Opportunities (1) and (2) have been blocked by the lack of incremental means of achieving these ends. Prescription drug prices are far above their free-market values because of non-addressable influences of subsidies and health insurance. Questionable end-of-life health care is also largely a product of these two influences. Thus carefully designed proxies for free-market conditions offer perhaps the only realistic approach to these two problems. Table 1 summarizes these four approaches to US health-care-cost containment, lists the barriers facing each, recommends solutions to these barriers, and estimates potential cost savings.

Abstract of "Large-Scale Computerization -- The Cure for the Health-Care Crisis"
Large-scale computerization of information flow-, analysis-, and storage operations in the US health care system would eliminate many of the system's most costly inefficiencies -those related to labor utilization efficiency. Other benefits include numerous improvements in quality of health care, collateral benefits outside that system, "off-proxy" health care benefits, increased public interest in addressing other major inefficiencies in the health care system, and benefits to foreign health care systems. In total, these benefits could largely cure the health care crisis. Arguments are given supporting the contention that such large-scale computerization offers both the only "cure" and the only permanent "cure" for the health care crisis.

Water-Supply-Related Issues
Since water supply issues play such a crucial role in the above, water supply issues are reviewed within the Irrigation review. Also, in the soils review is a review of river sediments issues and some data on the global water cycle, including the effects of dams.

Purpose and Intent of the Reviews of the Literature on Degradation of Soils and Croplands, Forest Lands, Grazing Lands, Irrigated Lands and Fisheries:
The intended use of these reviews is to provide information to people concerned about population growth, the stability and sustainability of human civilizations, and the key factors that determine the Earth's carrying capacity.  If you wish to:

• write articles for the mass media,
• write informed letters to public officials on public policy matters;
• prepare lobbying portfolios and testimony for public hearings;
• do research on the degradation of the Earth's key biomass inventories.

then you should find these literature reviews of interest. The intent is to raise the quality of debates over the earth's carrying capacity and the degradation of the key biomass inventories upon which carrying capacity depends. These compilations look at biomass degradation from a macro-perspective, i.e. that of interest to policy makers, writers, etc., and not necessarily to people actually engaged in agriculture, fisheries, etc. -- people with more of a micro-perspective.

This compilation also reflects efforts to: 

• translate jargon used by experienced workers in the field into terms more understandable to non-experts;
• obtain a set of basic data that can be used to give perspective to the more esoteric data, and to aid in calculations,
• point out the numerous positive feed-backs (instabilities) that characterize the interaction of Man and his natural, biomass-related life-support systems.

Emphasis here is on collection, rather than evaluation, of information. When several sources give conflicting information, this document presents all sets of information, normally in close proximity. If a source evaluates various data and arrives at a "best" value, this is also pointed out here. If no such evaluations are available, the reader's best recourse may be to take some sort of average of all values given.

AN OFFER TO SERIOUS USERS OF THESE REVIEWS
You may find these literature reviews and issue analyses more useful if they are located on your own hard drive as word processing documents. Then, besides using the detailed tables of contents, you can also do key-word searches to pick out the facts, figures, sentences and paragraphs you need, copy them to a separate file and then edit this file to aid in whatever document you are writing. (Nothing in this website is copyrighted.) You can also make additions to the contents of your copies of the reviews for your own use in the future.

Any or all of the literature reviews, and the analyses of support for international family planning and globalization are available to anyone. They are available free in the form of word-processing files e-mailed to you as attached files.  Just fill in the form below.  Then submit the form.  Your request is normally responded to within 3 days. If you do not receive a response by then, contact the author, Bruce Sundquist, (bsundquist1@alltel.net). On rare occasions you may receive a notice saying "This form is not properly registered with ALLTEL."  If this happens, send an E-mail to the author listing the document(s) that you want. 

UPDATES: New materials collected since the dates of publication mentioned above are in the form of updates waiting to be categorized and inserted into the web site.  Even though these updates are not yet categorized, you may still find them useful, either by doing word searches or just scrolling down through them.  If you would like any of these updates as word-processing files emailed to you as attached files, please indicate this in the form below before submitting it.

WEB SITE STRUCTURE
This site's five literature reviews on natural resource degradation issues are each fairly independent of each other. However they all have the same basic structure, so once you become familiar with one review you will know how to better use the other reviews. None of these reviews is intended to be read from start to finish. They are to be considered as reference documents which can be used to obtain specific information. The common components of each review are (in order):

Table of Contents -- fairly detailed -- including chapter titles, section titles and sub-section titles. So you can frequently learn where to look to obtain the desired information just by looking through the five Tables of Contents. If you have specific information needs, this is the place to start.

Overview: If you just want a broad understanding of the degradation of a natural resource of interest, you could start by reading the Overviews. These might help you frame more specific queries that will require visiting subsequent portions of the literature review to answer. There are few literature citations supporting statements in Overviews. For these you need to go to the chapters following the Overview and then to the Reference Lists.

Basics: Material that does not fall into the categories of Inventories or Degradation. For example: land classifications, soil formation, technologies, sustainable yields, pollution effects, aridity/climate-related issues.

Inventories: Degradation data is hard to comprehend or evaluate unless the magnitude of the basic resource is know. E.g., data on South America's cropland topsoil loss is nearly meaningless unless you have a feel for how much topsoil South American croplands have, and how much potential (not-used) cropland exists in South America.

Degradation: Basic data on cumulative degradation and current degradation rates.

History, Law, Politics, Economics: Facts and figures needed to understand the degradation and its effects more clearly.

Appendices: definitions, units conversions and density data -- needed to make optimal use of information gathered in this document. Note that units conversions are of two types -- the usual, precise ones like miles to kilometers and the more imprecise ones such as conversion of pounds of grass to pounds of beef. You should check this section whenever you want to do some of your own calculations based on date you find in these reviews.

Organizations and addresses: A list of names, addresses (and sometimes telephone numbers) of organizations involved in issues pertinent to the review. Some of them serve as sources of informative documents on various aspects of the material covered in the review. Organizations are referred to in the text (and Reference Lists) of this document by a 5-character identifier keyed to the identifier preceding each organization name/address in this list. Usually these 5-character identifiers are preceded by the word "Source:" whenever they appear in the text or a Reference List.

Reference List: Traceability is an important feature of the information compiled in this document. All information compiled is referenced as to its source. This is not only to lend credibility to this document, but also to help you dig deeper into any issue you need a deeper understanding of. References listed at the end of each Review are keyed to the text by a system of citations based on the year of publication, the last name of the lead author, and a running index. The Reference List and system of reference citations (found in the text) are based on the year of publication, the last name of the lead author, and a running index. For example, the reference citation 93T2 refers to the second referenced publication published in 1993 by lead authors whose last names begin with "T". The advantage of this system is that it makes it easy for the reader to determine when a given reference was written, without having to refer to the Reference list.

Comments and Analyses: These are not put into one section of each review. Instead, they are incorporated within the other sections of each review in the most appropriate spot. In the body of each review, compiler's comments are intended mainly to help the reader understand the information collected and to point out problems and inconsistencies associated with it. Such comments are headed by the word "Comments:".
Some information evaluation and analysis done by the compiler is also included here and is labeled "Analysis:". Comments and analyses by the compiler take up well under 10% of this document.

NOTES ON TABLE FORMATTING
These documents are entirely on word-processing files. No spread-sheet software, graphics files etc. were involved. The most important departure from ordinary word-processing files will be noted in the numerous tables. It was found that the usual tables seen in word-processing documents are major memory hogs, and they take up more space than necessary. So to economize on memory and space and to thereby reduce the time required to email attached files and to upload files onto this web site, most tables have been constructed using a fixed-pitch font (Courier 10-pt.) with every other blank space filled in with tildes (~) to prevent browsers from replacing sequences of multiple blank spaces by single blanks, thereby making table columns uneven. Table columns are divided by vertical bars "|". If you put attached files of the above documents onto your hard drive, you can simply do a Find/ Replace to change all tildes (~) to blank spaces if you wish to make the tables more readable or presentable. You can also use the existing "|" as column dividers if you choose to convert any of the tables to the usual, more formal, type of tables usually seen in word-processing files.

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