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The diversity of species and genes in ecological communities affects the functioning of these communities. These ecological effects of biodiversity in turn are affected by both climate change through enhanced greenhouse gases, aerosols and loss of land cover [citation needed], and biological diversity, causing a rapid loss of biodiversity and extinctions of species and local populations.
The combination of lower extinction rates and high rates of speciation leads to the high levels of species richness in the tropics. A critique of the geographical area hypothesis is that even if the tropics is the most extensive of the biomes, successive biomes north of the tropics all have about the same area.
These include building materials, fibers, dyes, rubber, and oil. Biodiversity is also important to the security of resources such as water, timber, paper, fiber, and food. [175] [176] [177] As a result, biodiversity loss is a significant risk factor in business development and a threat to long-term economic sustainability. [178] [179]
Graph shows principles of intermediate disturbance hypothesis: I. at low levels of ecological disturbance species richness decreases as competitive exclusion increases, II. at intermediate levels of disturbance, diversity is maximized because species that thrive at both early and late successional stages can coexist, III. at high levels of ...
Ecosystem-based Adaptation (EbA) describes a variety of approaches for adapting to climate change, all of which involve the management of ecosystems to reduce the vulnerability of human communities to the impacts of climate change such as storm and flood damage to physical assets, coastal erosion, salinisation of freshwater resources, and loss of agricultural productivity.
However, predators can also influence the structure of lower trophic levels from the top-down. These influences can dramatically shift dominant species in terrestrial and marine systems [ 28 ] [ 29 ] The interplay and relative strength of top-down vs. bottom-up controls on ecosystem structure and function is an important area of research in the ...
If we assume that some biocapacity should be left for other species, the level of ecological overshoot increases. [ 49 ] [ 50 ] According to Wackernagel and the organisation he has founded, the Earth has been in " overshoot ", where humanity is using more resources and generating waste at a pace that the ecosystem cannot renew, since the 1970s ...
In ecology, resilience is the capacity of an ecosystem to respond to a perturbation or disturbance by resisting damage and subsequently recovering. Such perturbations and disturbances can include stochastic events such as fires, flooding, windstorms, insect population explosions, and human activities such as deforestation, fracking of the ground for oil extraction, pesticide sprayed in soil ...