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Environmental degradation is the deterioration of the environment through depletion of resources such as quality of air, water and soil; the destruction of ecosystems; habitat destruction; the extinction of wildlife; and pollution. It is defined as any change or disturbance to the environment perceived to be deleterious or undesirable.
The environmental impact of the oil shale industry includes the consideration of issues such as land use, waste management, water and air pollution caused by the extraction and processing of oil shale. Surface mining of oil shale deposits causes the usual environmental impacts of open-pit mining.
Environmental degradation, human insecurity, and social conflict frequently accompany natural resource exploitation. The impacts of the depletion of natural resources include the decline of economic growth in local areas; however, the abundance of natural resources does not always correlate with a country's material prosperity.
An ecological or environmental crisis occurs when changes to the environment of a species or population destabilizes its continued survival. Some of the important causes include: Degradation of an abiotic ecological factor (for example, increase of temperature, less significant rainfalls) Increased pressures from predation
Habitat degradation is caused by the depletion of resources, in which human activities are the primary driving force. [48] [49] One major impact that the depletion of fish stocks causes is a dynamic change and erosion to marine food webs, which can ultimately lead to ecosystem collapse because of the imbalance created for other marine species.
Causes of habitat fragmentation include geological processes that slowly alter the layout of the physical environment [36] (suspected of being one of the major causes of speciation [36]), and human activity such as land conversion, which can alter the environment much faster and causes the extinction of many species.
Water pollution is an environmental issue that affects many water bodies. This photograph shows foam on the New River as it enters the United States from Mexico. Environmental issues are disruptions in the usual function of ecosystems. [1] Further, these issues can be caused by humans (human impact on the environment) [2] or they can be natural ...
Desertification is a gradual process of increased soil aridity.Desertification has been defined in the text of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) as "land degradation in arid, semi-arid and dry sub-humid regions resulting from various factors, including climatic variations and human activities."