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1. Take these notes into your book

The number of people living in an area is called population density

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ILOs for your lesson
To understand the terms population distribution and density
To give reasons for population density

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2. Complete the definitions for sparsely and densely 

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2. Complete the definitions for sparsely and densely 

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When there are very few people living in an area it is described as being sparsely populated.

When there are lots of people living in an area it is said to be densely populated.

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- The distribution is how the people are spread out.
This can be EVEN or UNEVEN.

Complete these notes

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video to introduce terms

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A discussion about the meaning of population density and some of the reasons for the uneven distribution of people across the world. Concludes by suggesting population distribution in Africa is complex and needs to be examined in more detail.

Can be used to discuss population distribution and density, over-population and reasons for migration. Explain why fertile land and a good climate attract more people. Define population density. Why do many MEDCs have high densities whereas many LEDCs have low densities? Why is the distribution of population important?

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BBC Bitesize - GCSE Geography - Where in the world do people live?

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Population density and reasons for the uneven distribution of people across the world.

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- There are some places in the world that are almost empty with no people at all.  Deserts, forests and very cold areas in the North are like this.                                                     -There are other types of places where lots of people live e.g. on the coast, near rivers and on flat land.

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- There are some places in the world that are almost empty with no people at all.  Deserts, forests and very cold areas in the North are like this.                                                     -There are other types of places where lots of people live e.g. on the coast, near rivers and on flat land.

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Watch this video to introduce the 2 concepts. Take down facts you have learned.

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Read this interesting news article

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Read this interesting news article

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Do you long for peace and solitude on your travels? Then you'll do far worse than to take your next break in one of these countries. To mark World Population Day, we've researched the 10 least densely populated, measured in number of people per square kilometre, according to the latest available figures from the UN Population Division.

Such trips could mean roaming the plains of Mongolia, striking through rainforest in Suriname, or cruising the vast fjords of Greenland. This is how to do remote, wild and adventurous - with the figures to back up your post-holiday bragging. The map above, meanwhile, shows every country in the world according to population density - so you know which ones to steer clear of if you like peace and quiet.

1. Greenland

Population density: 0.0 people per sq km

Rounded to the nearest decimal place, the population density of Greenland is officially 0.0. The world's largest island is home to around 56,000 people, meaning that a population around the size of west Devon (an area of 448.3 square miles) inhabits an area of 836,330 sq miles. This vast land, which has been inhabited for around 4,500 years, has mountainous shorelines, long summer days and jewel-blue fjords. Try visiting the Arctic ghost town of Skoldungen, abandoned for more accessible settlements in 1961.

2. Falkland Islands

Population density: 0.3 people per sq km

This archipelago on the Patagonian Shelf is home to just 3,000 people. Argentina famously lays claim to this British Overseas Territory, but a referendum in 2013 saw the population vote overwhelmingly to remain British - just three of the 1,517 votes cast favoured Argentinian rule. Chris Moss, a Telegraph Travel contributor, says it is a "special, strange place and those who do make the effort often become repeat visitors. Stanley [the capital] provides a nice homely stopover on voyages that revolve around wild seas, icebergs and penguins. Pubs, a post office, a cathedral, an excellent museum and good gastronomy mean that a stay is not just quirky, but actually very pleasant too."

* 10 of the best technology-free holidays

3. Mongolia

Population density: 1.9 people per sq km

A landlocked country of wide steppe and semi-desert, Mongolia has a population that clusters in the capital, Ulaanbaatar, leaving swathes of land pinpricked only by small nomadic communities threatened by harsh weather, storms and economic difficulties. Visitors are lured by the chance to ride horses across wild, open landscapes (the country had an area of 1.5 million sq km) and the chance to stay in remote gers that offer an insight into traditional ways of living.

* Kate Humble on living with Nomads in Mongolia

4. Western Sahara

Population density: 2.3 people per sq km

This land of 266,000 sq km (103,000 sq.mi.) is a disputed territory, between Morocco and the Polisario Front, an Algeria-backed rebel movement. The land is mostly flat desert, rich in phosphates, with extra resources in the form of fisheries and possibly offshore oil. The Foreign Office advises against all travel to within 30km north/west and to the south/east of the Berm, a 2,700km long wall dividing the desert, and says that in remote areas there is a risk of landmines. There are no advisories against visiting the area around Laayoune, the largest city, where most of the populace lives.

5. Namibia

Population density: 2.9 people per sq km

The shifting dunes of this southern African country occupy much of its landmass, although it also has game-rich grasslands and a semi-arid Central Plateau. Top attractions include the Kalahari Desert, the Skeleton Coast, and Lüderitz, a bright harbour town with early 20th century German Art Nouveau buildings.

* Namibia: Trip of a Lifetime

Credit: Iuliia Sokolovska - Fotolia

6. French Guiana

Population density: 2.9 people per sq km

France in South America can be found in French Guiana, an overseas territory of our neighbour across the Channel. The product is a strange mixture of western motorways, colonial architecture and French law alongside dense rainforest and Caribbean cuisine. Visiting in 2011 for Telegraph Travel, Chris Moss noted how "Liberte, Égalité, Fraternité" was stencilled on the side of a small government building near the border post at Le Juliette. Not far from the spot is the former transportation camp of St Laurent du Marconi, where 70,000 convicted criminals and political prisoners were sent between 1852 and 1953.

7. Australia

Population density: 3.1 people per sq km

Mark Chipperfield, our Australia expert, says it as one of the world's greatest travel destinations for its "extraordinary scenery and exotic wildlife" and diverse landscapes: "Red dirt deserts, tropical beaches, snow-capped mountains and temperate rainforest can all be found here." It has a vast area - 7,692,024 km² - and a relatively low a population of 23 million - around a third of that of the UK. Citizens cluster in the coastal cities such as Sydney, Canberra and Perth, leaving much of the Red Centre empty.

See our extensive guides to Australia for more information on how to visit.

* Mapped: Terror threat around the world

8. Iceland

Population density: 3.3 people per sq km

The Northern Lights may shine bright over this lunar landscape of snow, rock, ice, and volcano, and those who venture to see them won't have many companions. Iceland has a population of around 330,000, mostly centred in the cool capital Reykjavík. Elsewhere on the island there are glacier walks, climbs, descents inside volcanoes (really) and some of the world's best diving: the gaps between tectonic plates are filled with crystal-clear waters.

9. Suriname

Population density: 3.3 people per sq km

This sovereign state, with Dutch as the official language, is squeezed inbetween French Guiana, Guyana and Brazil. Although the country is mostly rainforest - there are no natural harbours and few railways or roads - its capital, Paramaribo, is home to the Saint Peter and Paul Cathedral, which would not look out of place in a European city square. John Gimlette, visiting in 2011, said: " If I were to design the perfect city, it would be like Paramaribo. It would all be white, and have a river running through it. There'd be plantations and fruit trees, and little canals would ripple through the centre. There'd be no business district or overbearing banks, and nothing would be taller than a church. At the heart of it all would be a little purple fortress, like a hat full of mansions."

10. Botswana

Population density: 3.5 people per sq km

Botswana is the world's largest producer of diamonds, but as it tries to lessen its dependency on exports of the jewels, safari tourism is developing. Indeed, it has been described as offering one of the world's best game drive experiences: the Big Five are all on the prowl. Other highlights of the country, 40 per cent of which is protected and conserved for wildlife, include the wetlands of the Okavango Delta and the Kalahari Desert.

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Mapped: The world's most - and least - crowded countries

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Do you long for peace and solitude on your travels? Then you'll do far worse than to take your next break in one of these countries. To mark World Population Day, we've researched the 10 least densely populated, measured in number of people per square kilometre, according to the latest available figures from the UN Population Division.

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Map of World,  Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland

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Map of World,  Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland

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Name the type of map
What does this map show?
Where are most people living? Name areas from map.
Where are least people living?

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Dot distribution map of Population density 

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Dot distribution map of Population density 

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This map shows population density of the world
What do the colours represent?
Which continent has the highest density? Which continent has the lowest density?

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Visualising Population Density Across the Globe

This interactive map shows data from the Global Human Settlement Layer (GHSL) produced by the European Commission JRC and the CIESIN Columbia University. Integrating huge volumes of satellite data with national census data, the GHSL has applications for a wide range of research and policy related to urban growth, development and sustainability, and is available as open data. This interactive map has received 250,000 visitors since 2017, indicating the demand for high quality global population visualisations. The GHSL dataset encourages understanding of the complex hierarchy of human settlement, rather than making simple rural-urban divisions. Some introductory highlights are discussed here with links for further information.

Megaregions and Diverse Urban Forms

In the early 20th century, geographers like Patrick Geddes observed how rail and road networks were allowing rapidly growing cities to fuse together into vast sprawling conurbations. A classic example is the northeastern seaboard of the USA (click on links to focus the map), a megalopolis as Gottman termed it, stretching hundreds of miles from Washington to Boston, with around 55m people.

The GHSL data shows how widespread urban megaregions have become. China has many, the largest being the Pearl River Delta region, and the Yangtze River Delta megaregion, both with around 50m population and growing significantly.

Another related form of megaregion comes from areas of dense agriculture that begin to urbanise with looser patterns of small scale industry. McGee first used the term desakota ("village-city") in relation to the incredible form of Java in Indonesia, with the densities of urban hinterlands greatly exceeding Western cities but with activity patterns remaining dispersed and linked to agriculture. Similar desakota patterns can be seen in Kolkata, Dhaka, Lahore and Beijing regions, and increasingly in several regions of Sub-Saharan Africa including Nigeria and surrounding Lake Victoria, though with much diversity in each case.

Density and Development

Urban densities are linked to cultures of living, with regions like Latin America and East Asia noted for high density urban forms. Higher population densities are also more prevalent in the Global South, as in poorer countries transport infrastructure is less developed and housing used more intensively. The highest density cities in the world are in South and South East Asia, such as Mumbai, Dhaka and Manila (note this depends how density is measured- see the Analysis page).

But these cities are more prosperous than neighbouring rural areas, and high densities can also be linked to affluence. Singapore, Hong Kong and Seoul combine extremely high densities with very high levels of prosperity. The richest large western cities, like London, Paris, New York and San Francisco are also relatively high density and intensifying.

Another important aspect of density is its relationship with travel demand and energy use. There are many examples of huge urban regions at very low densities, most evidently in the USA with metro regions such as Atlanta and Houston. Unsurprisingly these cities have the highest rates of transport energy use and carbon emissions in the world.

Sprawl is not however limited to the USA, and similar forms at a smaller scale can be seen in countries like Australia and Canada. The industrial heartland of Europe that follows the river Rhine through western Germany to Belgium and the Netherlands, is notably dispersed and low density.

Traces of Ancient Civilisations

As well as exploring contemporary urbanism, many historic patterns remain engraved in the landscape of human settlement. Ancient cities first appeared by fertile rivers that could support the intensive agricultre needed to feed an urban population. Egypt spectacularly displays the contrast between the arid Sahara and the rich lands fertilised by the Nile's annual inundation. This landscape has supported urban civilisation for around 5000 years.

The oldest cities we know of were on the Tigris and Euphrates river deltas, near modern day Basra in Iraq. Another important ancient civilisation grew around the Indus Valley near Hyderabad in modern day Pakistan.

As well as rivers, some ancient transport links are visible in modern settlement patterns. The Roman road Via Aemilia cut across Northern Italy, through what is now Bologna and Parma. Its precise straight form is still evident 2000 years after its completion.

Links to Find Out More-

Analysis page- Interactive statistics on country and city density profiles, and change over time.

EC JRC CIESIN Global Human Settlement Layer- The dataset used to make this visualisation, which is free to download.

Citygeographics Blogpost- more information on this visualisation

Interactive Statistics

The "Interactive Stats" checkbox at the top left of the map turns on density statistics for countries and cities which have been calculated from the GHSL data (1km scale). Roll your mouse over areas to see average densities and built-up areas over time. Zoom in and out to switch between country and city statistics. More discussion on the density statistics can be found on this blog post.

Defining Population Density

There are different approaches to measuring population density. The GHSL population layer shown in the map describes residents per square km, related to the underlying census data used. It is important to remember that this measure describes where people live, so areas like Central Business Districts can appear low density if they do not include residents (see for example the very centre of London or Tokyo which are dominated by office activity and have few residents).

The interactive statistics include Built-Up Area and Average Population Density of Built-Up Area. The density measures chosen focus on comparing urban areas and do not include areas of unpopulated land such as deserts and mountains. That is why for example that Saudi Arabia is recorded as having a higher population density than the Netherlands, because the built-up area of Saudia Arabia has a higher density of people despite the country including the vast Arabian Desert.

Urban Boundaries

The city statistics on this website use the urban centre boundaries 2015 from GHSL. It is very clear from the GHSL data that there is diverse hierarchy of urban settlements at different scales, and setting boundaries influences statistical results. More advanced statistics with multiple boundaries could be calculated using GHSL but have not been developed here beyond the combination of national and urban centre statistics.

Cartographic Aspects

It should be borne in mind that the density classification and data scale used in the map influences its appearance. The classification used is non-linear (see map key top left), so the lower density classes represent changes of hundreds of people per square km, while the top classes represent changes of tens of thousands.

The scale of the underlying data is also important. The GHSL population data is available at 1km and 250m scales, and both layers are used here at different zoom levels. You can see the change in detail, with for example low density rural areas fragmenting into medium density towns and villages when switching between the 1km and 250m level of detail, particularly in countries with extensive rural populations like India.

Finally the map is influenced by the map projection used, which in this case the problematic Web Mercator projection, which shrinks the area of countries near the equator. Note the statistics are all calculated using the original data projection (World Mollweide).

Data Limitations

The GHSL is a brilliant dataset, but does inevitably have some limitations due to the mixed quality of the underlying remotely sensed data and census data. In some very remote areas you can see large flat areas of low density, due to the lack of high quality remotely sensed data, for example Nepal and North Western China.

Variable census data also affects the density results, particularly in relation to peak density measures. This is evident when comparing major European cities. High quality census data looks to have been available for France, Spain, the UK and most Scandinavian countries, with dense city centres clearly highlighted. However densities in German, Dutch and Italian cities seem to be too low, probably linked to only lower resolution census data being available. These countries do appear to be an exception however, and good quality data has been sourced for most of the globe.

This is the first major release of the GHSL data and it will likely be further improved in future releases.

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Mapping Population Density Across the Globe

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This interactive map shows data from the Global Human Settlement Layer (GHSL) produced by the European Commission JRC and the CIESIN Columbia University. Integrating huge volumes of satellite data with national census data, the GHSL has applications for a wide range of research and policy related to urban growth, development and sustainability, and is available as open data.

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What does the map of Ireland show? take points down and then think of reasons- physical and human. Use map with cities to help. 

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What does the map of Ireland show? take points down and then think of reasons- physical and human. Use map with cities to help. 

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Examples of sparsely and densely populated areas 

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Examples of sparsely and densely populated areas 

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Why are some places crowded and others empty?

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Why are some places crowded and others empty?

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THINK, PAIR, SHARE-  Where are these places? What are people doing here? Why is it like this? Would you like to  live here?

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ILO- to give reasons (physical and human) for sparsely and densely populated areas

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ILO- to give reasons (physical and human) for sparsely and densely populated areas

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Complete this page in your booklet

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Minecraft video!

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3. Complete the page in your booklet. decide if each match is sparsely or densely populated, even or uneven distribution 

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3. Complete the page in your booklet. decide if each match is sparsely or densely populated, even or uneven distribution 

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Population densities of all countries in world 

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Population densities of all countries in world 

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What are the most densely populated countries in the world?

The most populous countries in the world are not the most densely populated.

Here is a ranking of the top 10 most densely populated countries in the world:

1. Macau (Population density: 21,055/km²)

2. Monaco (Population density: 19,150/km²)

3. Singapore (Population density: 8,109/km²)

4. Hong Kong (Population density: 6,677/km²)

5. Gibraltar (Population density: 5,620/km²)

6. Bahrain (Population density: 2,052/km²)

7. Vatican City (Population density: 1,820/km²)

8. Maldives (Population density: 1,719/km²)

9. Malta (Population density: 1,390/km²)

10. Sint Maarten (Population density: 1,234/km²)

As the country with the world's highest population, it is not surprising that the Chinese territory of Macau also has the world's highest population density at 21,081/km². This is followed by the small European city-state of Monaco at 19,256/km², the south-east Asian city-state of Singapore, and the Chinese territory of Hong Kong. It is notable that all three of these locations are regarded as centers of wealth and finance, attracting a population of many high net worth individuals.

Some of the largest countries in the world by landmass have quite low population densities. For example, Russia has a population density of just 8/km², while Canada is even lower at 4/km². The United States of America has a relatively low population density of 35/km², given that it is the country with the third-highest population in the world. In comparison, the two countries with the highest populations - China and India - have population densities of 146/km² and 412/km², respectively.

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What are the most densely populated countries in the world? The most populous countries in the world are not the most densely populated.

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Complete task 1,2 and 3 in your booklet

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Take down a copy of the equation

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Complete notes on density

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With your partner complete these sentences

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Can you name 10 countries which are found inside this circle?

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- be able to define population distribution
- be able to define sparsely and densely populated
- provide examples of sparsely and densely populated countries
-calculate the population density for a country
- use a density (choropleth) map to describe patterns of the world and Ireland's population
- give reasons (physical and human factors) to explain population density
-create a KeyNote showing areas which are sparsely and densely populated in the world and reasons to explain

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Load this really cool link!!!
It will show you density for all parts of Northern Ireland.
Task- Where is density the highest? Give a reason.
Where is density the lowest? Give a reason.
Find the area where you live and describe the density.

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This report is powered by InstantAtlas™ Data Visualization & Presentation Software

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read each statement and match the number up with each