While many people know about how plants prevent erosion, protect water supplies, and “clean the air”, how bees pollinate plants or how owls reduce rodent activity, many lesser-known organisms not only have crucial ecological roles, but also produce unique chemicals and pharmaceuticals that can literally save people’s lives. Thousands of plant species are used medically by traditional, indigenous communities ...
While many people know about how plants prevent erosion, protect water supplies, and “clean the air”, how bees pollinate plants or how owls reduce rodent activity, many lesser-known organisms not only have crucial ecological roles, but also produce unique chemicals and pharmaceuticals that can literally save people’s lives. Thousands of plant species are used medically by traditional, indigenous communities ...
“Mobile links” are animal species that provide critical ecosystem services and increase ecosystem resilience by connecting habitats and ecosystems as they move between them (Gilbert 1980; Lundberg and Moberg 2003;). Mobile links are crucial for maintaining ecosystem function, memory, and resilience (Nystrm and Folke 2001). The three main types of mobile links: genetic, process, and resource links (Lundberg and ...
“Mobile links” are animal species that provide critical ecosystem services and increase ecosystem resilience by connecting habitats and ecosystems as they move between them (Gilbert 1980; Lundberg and Moberg 2003;). Mobile links are crucial for maintaining ecosystem function, memory, and resilience (Nystrm and Folke 2001). The three main types of mobile links: genetic, process, and resource links (Lundberg and ...
The role of biodiversity in providing ecosystem services is actively debated in ecology. The diversity of functional groups (groups of ecologically equivalent species (Naeem and Li 1997)), is as important as species diversity, if not more so (Kremen 2005), and in most services a few dominant species seem to play the major role (Hooper et al. 2005). However, many ...
The role of biodiversity in providing ecosystem services is actively debated in ecology. The diversity of functional groups (groups of ecologically equivalent species (Naeem and Li 1997)), is as important as species diversity, if not more so (Kremen 2005), and in most services a few dominant species seem to play the major role (Hooper et al. 2005). However, many ...
Without forest cover, erosion rates skyrocket, and many countries, especially in the tropics, lose astounding amounts of soil to erosion. Worldwide, 11 million km2 of land (the area of USA and Mexico combined) are affected by high rates of erosion (Millennium Ecosystem Assessment 2005b). Every year about 75 billion tons of soil are thought to be eroded from terrestrial ...
Without forest cover, erosion rates skyrocket, and many countries, especially in the tropics, lose astounding amounts of soil to erosion. Worldwide, 11 million km2 of land (the area of USA and Mexico combined) are affected by high rates of erosion (Millennium Ecosystem Assessment 2005b). Every year about 75 billion tons of soil are thought to be eroded from terrestrial ...
One of the most vital and immediate services of ecosystems, particularly of forests, rivers and wetlands, is the provisioning and regulation of water resources. These services provide a vast range of benefits from spiritual to life-saving, illustrated by the classification of hydrologic services into five broad categories by Brauman et al. (2007): improvement of extractive water supply, improvement of ...
One of the most vital and immediate services of ecosystems, particularly of forests, rivers and wetlands, is the provisioning and regulation of water resources. These services provide a vast range of benefits from spiritual to life-saving, illustrated by the classification of hydrologic services into five broad categories by Brauman et al. (2007): improvement of extractive water supply, improvement of ...
Ecosystem services start at the most fundamental level: the creation of the air we breathe and the supply and distribution of water we drink. Through photosynthesis by bacteria, algae, plankton, and plants, atmospheric oxygen is mostly generated and maintained by ecosystems and their constituent species, allowing humans and innumerable other oxygen-dependent organisms to survive. Oxygen also enables the atmosphere ...
In our increasingly technological society, people give little thought to how dependent they are on the proper functioning of ecosystems and the crucial services for humanity that flow from them. Ecosystem services are “the conditions and processes through which natural ecosystems, and the species that make them up, sustain and fulfill human life” (Daily 1997); in other words, “the ...
Just as biodiversity has varied markedly through time, so it also varies across space. Indeed, one can think of it as forming a richly textured land and seascape, with peaks (hotspots) and troughs (cold spots), and extensive plains in between. Even locally, and just for particular groups, the numbers of species can be impressive, with for example c.900 species ...
The Earth is estimated to have formed, by the accretion through large and violent impacts of numerous bodies, approximately 4.5 billion years ago (Ga). Traditionally, habitable worlds are considered to be those on which liquid water is stable at the surface. On Earth, both the atmosphere and the oceans may well have started to form as the planet itself ...
Given the multiple dimensions and the complexity of the variety of life, it should be obvious that there can be no single measure of biodiversity. Analyses and discussions of biodiversity have almost invariably to be framed in terms of particular elements or groups of elements, although this may not always be apparent from the terminology being employed (the term ...
The third group of elements of biodiversity encompasses the scales of ecological differences from populations, through habitats, to ecosystems, ecoregions, provinces, and on up to biomes and biogeographic realms. This is an important dimension to biodiversity not readily captured by genetic or organismal diversity, and in many ways is that which is most immediately apparent to us, giving the ...
Organismal diversity encompasses the full taxonomic hierarchy and its components, from individuals upwards to populations, subspecies and species, genera, families, phyla, and beyond to kingdoms and domains. Measures of organismal diversity thus include some of the most familiar expressions of biodiversity, such as the numbers of species (i.e. species richness). Others should be better studied and more routinely employed ...
Some understanding of what the variety of life comprises can be obtained by distinguishing between different key elements. These are the basic building blocks of biodiversity. For convenience, they can be divided into three groups: genetic diversity, organismal diversity, and ecological diversity. Within each, the elements are organized in nested hierarchies, with those higher order elements comprising lower orderones. ...
Biological diversity or biodiversity (the latter term is simply a contraction of the former) is the variety of life, in all of its many manifestations. It is a broad unifying concept, encompassing all forms, levels and combinations of natural variation, at all levels of biological organization (Gaston and Spicer 2004). A rather longer and more formal definition is given ...
Although conservation biology has been an organized field only since the mid-1980s, it ispossible to identify and summarize at least several salient trends that have shaped it since.Implementation and transformation Conservation biologists now work in a much more elaborate field than existed at the time of its founding. Much of the early energy and debate in conservation biology focused ...
