Biodiversity Loss and its Impact on Humanity
The diversity of life forms in the environment is an essential thing in the existence and survival of the human species. These life forms take part in various functions and services that support the survival of people. Biodiversity is getting lost despite the diversity’s significant role for a better human life. This warrants the need to evaluate the difference in these life forms and the role that this diversity plays in the survival of people so as to ensure that the support is sustainable. The article on biodiversity loss and its impact on humanity states that biodiversity loss makes the ecological communities to perform their environmental preservation and improvement functions poorly, the loss across the various ecological levels has more impact than the loss occuring within a particular trophic level, and the impact of biodiversity loss on the environment is greater than many other factors that affect the environment (Cardinale et al., 2012).
Biodiversity loss makes the ecological communities to perform their ecological preservation and improvement functions poorly. According to Cardinale et al., the loss of diverse biological life forms “reduces the efficiency by which” they “capture biologically essential resources, produce biomass, decompose and recycle biologically essential nutrients” (2012, p. 60). This reduced efficiency interferes with the natural environmental being hence leading uninhabitable environments.
Additionally, biodiversity loss across different trophic levels has more impact on the ecosystem functions than the biodiversity loss within a particular trophic level. This observation bases on the fact that “food web interactions are key mediators of ecosystem functioning” (Cardinale et al., 2012, p. 60). Thus, the loss of consumers at a particular trophic level will affect other consumers at different trophic levels. For instance, “the loss of higher consumers can cascade down the food web to influence plant biomass” (Cardinale et al., 2012, p. 60). This makes the impact of the loss that affect more than one trophic level to be more significant since a greater population of species will be affected as compared to the number of species affected if the effects would have remained on only one trophic level.
Further, biodiversity loss has more impact on environmental change than many other factors that modify the environment. Cardinale et al. states that the “impacts of species loss on primary productivity are of comparable magnitude to the impact of drought, ultraviolet radiation, climate warming, ozone, acidification” and “certain forms of nutrient pollution” (2012, p. 60). These effects make the understanding of the impact of biodiversity loss essential.
Understanding the impact of biodiversity loss on the basic existence of the human life form is necessary for the survival of human beings. This loss in biodiversity results in serious consequences such as the poor ecological community’s performance of their environmental preservation and improvement functions, highly impactful changes if the effects of biodiversity loss affect more than one trophic level, and greater impact on the environment than many other factors. Consequently, managing and maintaining diversity in the biological life forms in our environment is important.
What sentence(s) impressed you the most? Why?
The most impressive sentence is “Functional traits of organisms have large impacts on the magnitude of ecosystem functions, which give rise to a wide range of plausible impacts
of extinction on ecosystem function.” (Cardinale et al., 2012, p.61). I was impressed by this sentence because the sentence provides a more detailed information on how the biodiversity loss impacts the normal functioning of ecological communities in their roles of preserving the environment.
What sentence(s) pointed out an idea or connection you hadn’t considered before?
The sentence that provides a connection that I had not considered before is “One recent study compared 11 long-term experiments performed at one research site, and another used a suite of meta-analyses from published data to show that the impacts of species loss on primary productivity are of comparable magnitude to the impacts of drought, ultraviolet radiation, climate warming, ozone, acidification, elevated CO2, herbivory, fire, and certain forms of nutrient pollution” (Cardinale et al., 2012, p.61). This statement provides insight of the significance of the effect of biodiversity loss. The statement shows the relative magnitude of the effect of biodiversity loss.
Reference
Cardinale, B. J., Duffy, J. E., Gonzalez, A., Hooper, D. U., Perrings, C., Venail, P., … Kinzig, A. P. (2012). Biodiversity loss and its impact on humanity. Nature, 486(7401), 59-67. doi:10.1038/nature11148
