But what is the land use for the area? The above only demonstrates a small section of the US losing population, not depopulating of land area. I explained the difference in the example with the Netherlands. The difference is far from trivial and is the more important statistic when looking at land use trends. This is not an example of depopulating the land since the per person land use is rising fast enough to prevent less land from actually being used. Chris' example of Siberia is accurate and the same is true of North and South Dakota, the only states in the US actually experiencing depopulation of the land as opposed to decreasing population. I believe sections of Australia have also experienced localized depopulation of land but these are all very local phenomenon as opposed to James assertion that "Most developing countries are coping with depopulation of the land", a demonstrable false assertion. If anyone has data on a geographic region that is both losing population and decreasing per person land usage or decreasing population while not increasing per person land usage I would love to see it.
John Thornton