Population density (in agriculture: standing stock or plant density) is a measurement of population per unit land area. It is mostly applied to humans, but sometimes to other living organisms too. It is a key geographical term. In simple terms, population density refers to the number of people living in an area per square kilometre, or other unit of land area.
Population density is population divided by total land area, sometimes including seas and oceans, as appropriate.
Low densities may cause an extinction vortex and further reduce fertility. This is called the Allee effect after the scientist who identified it. Examples of the causes of reduced fertility in low population densities are:
Increased problems with locating sexual mates
Increased inbreeding
===Human densities===
List of countries and dependencies by population density
Population density is the number of people per unit of area, usually transcribed as "per square kilometer" or square mile, and which may include or exclude, for example, areas of water or glaciers. Commonly this is calculated for a county, city, country, another territory or the entire world.
The world's population is around 8,000,000,000 and the Earth's total area (including land and water) is . Therefore, from this very crude type of calculation, the worldwide human population density is approximately 8,000,000,000 ÷ 510,000,000 = . However, if only the Earth's land area of is taken into account, then human population density is . This includes all continental and island land area, including Antarctica. However, if Antarctica is excluded, then population density rises to over .
The European Commission's Joint Research Centre (JRC) has developed a suite of (open and free) data and tools named the Global Human Settlement Layer (GHSL) to improve the science for policy support to the European Commission Directorate Generals and Services and as support to the United Nations system.
Several of the most densely populated territories in the world are city-states, microstates and urban dependencies.