Garrison for the Rammas Echor

[Kuruharan]

This might be a question worthy of its own thread...

Gondor's population had fallen to the point where it needed something other than manpower to help

Was the population of Gondor as a whole reduced to such levels or was it mainly in the regions around Minas Tirith that suffered the most depopulation?

I was always sort of under the impression that the population of Gondor was more concentrated in the hinterlands and the Numenorian lineages (which would naturally have been concentrated around the centers of power) were the ones that were dying out.