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Ecosystems in similar environments that are located in different parts of the world can end up doing things very differently simply because they have different pools of species present. [11]: 321 The introduction of non-native species can cause substantial shifts in ecosystem function. [12]
Ecosystems produce, regulate, maintain, and supply services of critical necessity and beneficial to human health (cognitive and physiological), economies, and they even provide an information or reference function as a living library giving opportunities for science and cognitive development in children engaged in the complexity of the natural ...
A more significant number or variety of species or biological diversity of an ecosystem may contribute to greater resilience of an ecosystem because there are more species present at a location to respond to change and thus "absorb" or reduce its effects. This reduces the effect before the ecosystem's structure changes to a different state.
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.
Forest ecology shares characteristics and methodological approaches with other areas of terrestrial plant ecology, however, the presence of trees makes forest ecosystems and their study unique in numerous ways due to the potential for a wide variety of forest structures created by the uniquely large size and height of trees compared with other ...
Ecosystem services are the various benefits that humans derive from healthy ecosystems. These ecosystems, when functioning well, offer such things as provision of food, natural pollination of crops, clean air and water, decomposition of wastes, or flood control. Ecosystem services are grouped into four broad categories of services.
Soil health is a state of a soil meeting its range of ecosystem functions as appropriate to its environment. In more colloquial terms, the health of soil arises from favorable interactions of all soil components (living and non-living) that belong together, as in microbiota, plants and animals.
The biosphere (from Ancient Greek βίος (bíos) 'life' and σφαῖρα (sphaîra) 'sphere'), also called the ecosphere (from Ancient Greek οἶκος (oîkos) 'settlement, house' and σφαῖρα (sphaîra) 'sphere'), is the worldwide sum of all ecosystems. It can also be termed the zone of life on the Earth.