Geography
Ecosystem Diversity
Ecosystem diversity refers to the variety of different ecosystems within a specific area. It encompasses the range of habitats, communities, and ecological processes present, including forests, grasslands, wetlands, and marine environments. Ecosystem diversity is important for maintaining ecological balance, supporting biodiversity, and providing essential ecosystem services such as water purification, pollination, and climate regulation.
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7 Key excerpts on "Ecosystem Diversity"
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eBook - ePubEcosystem Services
Key Issues
- Mark Everard(Author)
- 2021(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
The relative contributions of different components of ecosystems and their interactions to the production of services vary between ecosystem services, as too does our level of understanding about exactly how these services are produced. Present-day usage of the term ‘ecosystem’ tends to include a broader set of environmental, economic, social, political and humanities science than implied by earlier definitions based purely on the natural world, acknowledging that people are part of an interactive holistic (socio-economic) system, where the welfare of humans and the health of the natural world are co-dependent (Raffaelli and White, 2013 ; Mace, 2014). Some ecosystem services derive directly from living elements. Biodiversity, shorthand for ‘biological diversity’, comprises ‘… the variability among living organisms from all sources including, inter alia, terrestrial, marine and other aquatic ecosystems and the ecological complexes of which they are part; this includes diversity within species, between species and of ecosystems’ (Convention on Biological Diversity, n.d.). Biodiversity is of central importance for the production of ecosystem services such as food, fibre, many ornamental resources, traditional herbal medicine and biologically based fuels, photosynthetic productivity and oxygen generation, nutrient cycling and soil formation, although uncertainties increase along this sequence as to precisely how these services are produced. Geodiversity, comprising ‘… the variety of rocks, fossils, minerals, natural processes, landforms and soils that underlie and determine the character of our landscape and environment’ (UKGAP, n.d.), plays crucial, albeit often indirect, supporting roles to these mainly biodiversity-derived service s. Other services are more directly dependent on geodiversity
eBook - ePub- Oswald J. Schmitz(Author)
- 2013(Publication Date)
- Island Press(Publisher)
This simple container system is a powerful metaphor for the way species assemble and interact in nature.The processes of production and consumption are fundamental to sustaining the functioning of all ecological systems globally. Natural ecological systems differ from the container system in that they are comprised of vastly more species with many more interdependencies than those found in the glass container. Understanding these complex interdependencies is the fundamental purpose of that subfield of biology known as ecology.What Is Ecology?
Ecology is a science aimed at understanding:- The processes by which living organisms interact with each other and with the physical and chemical components of their surrounding environment.
- The way those processes lead to patterns in the geographical distribution and abundance of different kinds of organisms.
Ecosystems encapsulate many forms of biological diversity (also called biodiversity). Biodiversity results from a variety among individuals comprising a species owing to sex, age, and genetic differences among those individuals. It also stems from differences between species living together in a geographic location. For example, species may differ in their functional roles (e.g., plant, herbivore, carnivore) and the efficiency with which each carries out its function in different environmental conditions. Biodiversity also arises from the myriad ways that species are linked to each other in ecosystems. As a consequence of these many forms of biodiversity, there is considerable complexity underlying the structure of ecosystems.The challenge in ecology is resolving this complexity.Biodiversity results from a variety among individuals comprising a species due to sex, age, and ge- netic differences; from differences between species living together in a geographic location; and from the myriad ways that species are linked to each other in ecosystems. As a consequence of these many forms of biodiversity, there is consider- able complexity underlying the structure of ecosystems. The chal- lenge in ecology is resolving this complexity.
- Justin Garson, Anya Plutynski, Sahotra Sarkar, Justin Garson, Anya Plutynski, Sahotra Sarkar(Authors)
- 2016(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
et al. 2012).While living variation or variety is the core of these definitions, in practice, the term “biodiversity” continues to be used in many different ways. Current usage ranges from being very specific (e.g. equating it with a single species), very general (e.g. equating it with the “fabric of life”), or somewhat tangential (e.g. equating it with any ecological factor relevant to ecosystems). For example, Díaz et al. (2009: 55) described “biodiversity” as “the number, abundance, composition, spatial distribution, and interactions of genotypes, populations, species, functional types and traits, and landscape units in a given system.” Partly, this usage reflects interest in “ecosystem services” – the benefits that humans obtain from natural ecosystems (e.g. fresh water, timber; see Daily 1997). There now are at least ten different definitions of “ecosystem services” (Polasky et al. 2015). Ecosystem services may be delivered from transformed land, from the whole planet as an “ecosystem”, and from non-biotic components. In this context, “biodiversity” typically has ecological definitions (similar to that of Diaz et al. quoted above), in order to characterize it as something whose importance arises by underpinning ecosystem services (Gasparatos and Willis 2015).Reflecting the various definitions of “biodiversity,” discussions of the value of biodiversity sometimes have focused on the value of all of nature, or of the value of specific elements, such as individual species or traits. Individual elements often will have a clear value – but it is less clear how we describe the value of biodiversity, particularly given the range of different definitions. Recent reviews of the history of the term “biodiversity” consequently have expressed some disenchantment with the idea of assigning value to biodiversity. For example, Morar et al
eBook - ePubEconomic Valuation of Biodiversity
An Interdisciplinary Conceptual Perspective
- Bartosz Bartkowski(Author)
- 2017(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
Accordingly, there exist many approaches to defining biodiversity, which encompasses numerous levels and dimensions, including species diversity, genetic diversity, Ecosystem Diversity, functional diversity. In Chapter 5 we will return to the issue of defining biodiversity. In addition to a presentation of various definitions and the difficulties related to defining biodiversity, it was shown in this chapter how biodiversity can be measured. This discussion will feed into numerous arguments further on in this book, including the critical evaluation of biodiversity proxies used in economic valuation studies and the attempt to provide some insights about how the conceptual framework to be developed in Chapter 5 can be coupled with empirical data. An important subject of this chapter was biodiversity’s ecological value. Building upon current ecological literature, it was shown that biodiversity is correlated with ecosystem functioning, particularly with ecosystem stability
- Michel Loreau, Andy Hector, Forest Isbell(Authors)
- 2022(Publication Date)
- Wiley-ISTE(Publisher)
IntroductionThe Ecological and Societal Consequences of Biodiversity Loss Michel LOREAU1 , Andy HECTOR2 , and Forest ISBELL3 1 Theoretical and Experimental Ecology Station, CNRS, Moulis, France 2 University of Oxford, UK 3 University of Minnesota, St. Paul, USAOne of the distinctive and fascinating features of ecological systems is their extraordinary complexity. An ecosystem is often composed of thousands of different species that interact in myriad ways at the scale of a single hectare. Each species is composed of many individuals that vary due to differences in their genetics and their particular experience of their local environment. These complex local systems are strongly connected to each other, and aggregate into larger and larger entities, from the landscape scale to that of the entire biosphere, where it becomes evident that they exert a major influence on the physical and chemical properties of our planet. How can such enormously complex systems be studied?During the second half of the 20th century, two increasingly divergent approaches to ecological systems developed within ecology, which have gradually led to two largely distinct disciplines, community ecology and ecosystem ecology. A community is defined broadly as a set of species that live together in some place. The focus in community ecology has traditionally been on species diversity: what exogenous and endogenous forces lead to more or less diverse communities? How do species interactions constrain the number of species that can coexist? What patterns emerge from these interactions? An ecosystem is the entire system of biotic and abiotic components that interact in some place. The ecosystem concept is broader than the community concept because it includes a wide range of biological, physical, and chemical processes that connect organisms and their environment. But the focus in ecosystem ecology has traditionally been on the overall functioning of ecosystems as distinct entities: how is energy captured, transferred, and ultimately dissipated in different ecosystems? How are limiting nutrients recycled, thereby ensuring the renewal of the material elements necessary for growth? What factors and processes control energy and material flows, from local to global scales?
eBook - ePub- David C. Coleman, Mac A. Callaham, D. A. Crossley Jr.(Authors)
- 2017(Publication Date)
- Academic Press(Publisher)
Ettema and Yeates, 2003 ), that interact with elements of the microbiota such as mycorrhiza in several ways, including mutualistic ones (Wall and Moore, 1999 ). Much has been learned about prokaryotic genetic diversity in soils; see reviews by Hugenholtz et al. (1998) and Fierer and Jackson (2006) .7.2 Biodiversity in Soils and Its Impacts on Terrestrial Ecosystem Function
There is increasing concern among biologists in the fates of the very diverse array of organisms in all ecosystems of the world. What do we know of the full species richness, particularly in soils, to make even any educated guesses about the total extent of the organisms, or how many of them may be in an endangered status (Coleman, 2001 ; Coleman et al., 1994b ; Hawksworth, 1991a , 2001 ; Orgiazzi et al., 2016 )? Soil biodiversity is best considered by focusing on the groups of soil organisms that play major roles in ecosystem functioning. Spheres of influence of soil biota are recognized, such as the root biota, the shredders of organic matter, and the soil bioturbators. These organisms influence or control ecosystem processes and have further influence via their interactions with key soil biota (e.g., plants) (Coleman, 2001 ; Lavelle et al., 2016 ; Wardle, 2002 ). Some organisms, such as the fungus and litter-consuming microarthropods, are very speciose. For example, there are up to 170 species in one order of mites, the oribatida, in the forest floor of one watershed in western North Carolina. Hansen (2000) measured increased species richness of oribatids as she experimentally increased litter species richness in experimental enclosures from one to two, four, and finally seven species of deciduous tree litter. This was attributed to the greater physical and chemical diversity of available microhabitats, which is in accord with the mechanisms suggested earlier by Anderson (1975a)
eBook - ePub- Charles Krebs(Author)
- 2008(Publication Date)
- CSIRO PUBLISHING(Publisher)
biodiversity , and the study of biodiversity is one of the hot topics in ecology today. Over a hundred years ago, Alfred Wallace recognized that animal and plant life was on the whole more abundant and varied in the tropics than in other parts of the globe. Other patterns of variation have long been known—small or remote islands have fewer species than large islands or those nearer continents. Ecologists try to describe and explain these trends in biodiversity as a first step in understanding ecological communities.Biodiversity is now an everyday term in newspapers and television reports, and the preservation of biodiversity has become a public goal in many countries. Biodiversity measurement is important because without an inventory of species we cannot decide on conservation goals. While conservation biologists often worry about one particular species, such as the giant panda, community ecologists tend to group the species and condense information into counts of number of species. This community-based approach looks for large patterns in groups of species and tries to understand what has caused them. To do this, we first need to know how to identify species of plants and animals and then how to measure biodiversity.Measurement of Biodiversity
The concept of biodiversity can be applied at several ecological levels. We can speak of genetic diversity within a species—this is one form of biodiversity that is important because of local adaptation of species to their environment. At the next level, species diversity is the more usual concept of biodiversity, and refers to the variety of species that are found in a community. Community and ecosystem biodiversity can also be measured as the diversity of ecological communities and ecosystems in a landscape. We shall confine our discussion of biodiversity here to the diversity of species in a community.Figure 12.1 Species richness of Lepidoptera collections (moths and butterflies) at Rothamsted Experimental Station in England in relation to sample size. More and more species accumulate in these light-trap samples as the collection of individuals grows larger, making it difficult to answer the simple question of how many moth species live in this agricultural landscape. (Data from Williams 1964
