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The Report examined the rate of decline in biodiversity and found that the adverse effects of human activities on the world's species is "unprecedented in human history": [14] one million species, including 40 percent of amphibians, almost a third of reef-building corals, more than a third of marine mammals, and 10 percent of all insects are ...
A diagram of the typical drivers of ecosystem collapse. [1]While collapse events can occur naturally with disturbances to an ecosystem—through fires, landslides, flooding, severe weather events, disease, or species invasion—there has been a noticeable increase in human-caused disturbances over the past fifty years.
The moa's inability to fly and their size, which made them easier targets, contributed to their rapid decline. This event serves as a cautionary tale about the delicate balance between human activity and biodiversity and highlights the potential consequences of over-hunting and habitat destruction. [5]
Biodiversity loss has bad effects on the functioning of ecosystems. This in turn affects humans, [ 45 ] because affected ecosystems can no longer provide the same quality of ecosystem services , such as crop pollination , cleaning air and water, decomposing waste, and providing forest products as well as areas for recreation and tourism .
The loss of biodiversity may not directly affect humans, but the indirect effects of losing many species as well as the diversity of ecosystems in general are enormous. When biodiversity is lost, the environment loses many species that perform valuable and unique roles in the ecosystem.
Habitat loss, disease and climate change are thought to be responsible for the drastic decline in populations in recent years. [12] Declines have been particularly intense in the western United States, Central America, South America, eastern Australia and Fiji (although cases of amphibian extinctions have appeared worldwide). While human ...
Pollinator decline is the reduction in abundance of insect and other animal pollinators in many ecosystems worldwide that began being recorded at the end of the 20th century. Multiple lines of evidence exist for the reduction of wild pollinator populations at the regional level, especially within Europe and North America.
The findings of TEEB (Interim Report) were largely in three areas—the economic size and welfare impact of losses of ecosystems and biodiversity, the strong links between biodiversity conservation and ecosystem health on the one hand and poverty elimination and the achievement of Millennium Development Goals on the other, and the ethical ...