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Also Gause's law. A biological rule which states that two species cannot coexist in the same environment if they are competing for exactly the same resource, often memorably summarized as "complete competitors cannot coexist". coniferous forest One of the primary terrestrial biomes, culminating in the taiga. conservation biology The study of Earth's biodiversity with the aim of protecting and ...
In the context of natural systems, command and control management attempts to control nature in order to improve natural resource extractions, establish predictability, and reduce threats. [20] Command and control strategies include the use of herbicides and pesticides to improve crop yields; [ 20 ] the culling of predators to protect game bird ...
Despite this, the cumulative effect of additional species in an ecosystem is not linear: additional species may enhance nitrogen retention, for example. However, beyond some level of species richness, [11]: 331 additional species may have little additive effect unless they differ substantially from species already present.
Ecosystems sustain life-supporting functions and provide ecosystem services like biomass production (food, fuel, fiber, and medicine), the regulation of climate, global biogeochemical cycles, water filtration, soil formation, erosion control, flood protection, and many other natural features of scientific, historical, economic, or intrinsic value.
Ecosystem services are ecologically mediated functional processes essential to sustaining healthy human societies. [6] Water provision and filtration, production of biomass in forestry, agriculture, and fisheries, and removal of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide (CO 2) from the atmosphere are examples of ecosystem services essential to public health and economic opportunity.
global warming – the observable increase in global temperatures considered mainly caused by the human induced enhanced greenhouse effect trapping the Sun's heat in the Earth's atmosphere. globalisation – the expansion of interactions to a global or worldwide scale; the increasing interdependence, integration and interaction among people and ...
Climate processes largely control the distribution, size, shape and properties of living organisms on Earth.For instance, the general circulation of the atmosphere on a planetary scale broadly determines the location of large deserts or the regions subject to frequent precipitation, which, in turn, greatly determine which organisms can naturally survive in these environments.
Trophic cascades are powerful indirect interactions that can control entire ecosystems, occurring when a trophic level in a food web is suppressed. For example, a top-down cascade will occur if predators are effective enough in predation to reduce the abundance, or alter the behavior of their prey, thereby releasing the next lower trophic level from predation (or herbivory if the intermediate ...