carrying capacity

carrying capacity (plural carrying capacities)

1. (transport) The number of people or things that a vehicle is designed to carry.
2. (ecology) The number of individuals of a particular species that an environment can support.
   • 1981, William Irwin Thompson, The Time Falling Bodies Take to Light: Mythology, Sexuality and the Origins of Culture, London: Rider/Hutchinson & Co., page 120:

     With their populations adjusted to the carrying capacity of the environment, hunters and gatherers rarely starve, for they are not dependent on the fortunes of a single crop.

• K (the standard abbreviation)

• biocapacity
• ecological footprint
• overshoot

• carrying capacity on Wikipedia.Wikipedia