Factors That Influence Biodiversity Include

Factors Affecting Biodiversity

Human population growth

• The global homo population has been growing exponentially for the last 150 years
• There are many reasons for this exponential growth, including:
  • Improved technology leading to anabundance of food = increase in birth rate
  • Improved medicine, hygiene and health intendance = subtract in expiry rate

The human population is growing exponentially

• Humans use many resource from the Globe such every bit state (for settlements and agronomics), water, woods and fossil fuels
• As the human population increases and countries become more than economically developed, our requirement for these natural resources besides increases
• This is having a harmful effect on many aspects of the environment, including aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems, and our atmosphere and climate
• The damage to these ecosystems is negatively impacting the species and habitats contained inside them
• This means that a conflict exists betwixt human needs and the conservation of biodiversity
• The main factors affecting biodiversity today are:
  • Habitat destruction
  • Overexploitation
  • Hunting
  • Agriculture
  • Climate change

Habitat devastation

• Many human needs pb to natural environments beingness destroyed
• When land is cleared for agriculture, industry, energy product housing, transport, leisure facilities, waste disposal and water storage, this results in:
  • Habitat loss (establish and animals completely lose their habitats)
  • Habitat fragmentation (habitats are divided into modest areas - populations living within these separated habitat fragments are more probable to suffer from inbreeding or local extinction)
• Deforestation is 1 of the well-nigh dissentious forms of habitat destruction, every bit forest habitats frequently accept the highest levels of biodiversity
• Marine habitats are too existence destroyed, including:
  • Coral reefs (some people employ dynamite every bit an extreme style to catch fish, which damages corals)
  • Bounding main beds (fishing practices such as trawling, where nets are dragged along the sea bed, destroy this of import habitat)

Overexploitation

•  Many of the natural resources exploited past humans are really being overexploited (they are beingness used upwards faster than they tin be replaced)
• For example, much deforestation is unsustainable as trees are removed but are not replaced past replanting. Even if they are replanted, the rate at which copse are being removed far exceeds the rate at which they are growing back
• Fish stocks are likewise being overexploited, which is as well having a knock-on effect on organisms that feed on these fish species, such every bit marine mammals and seabirds

Hunting

• Hunting is another form of overexploitation, every bit many wild, non-farmed species of animals are existence hunted and removed more apace than their wild populations can be replenished
  • An example is the hunting of animals for 'bush meat' in developing countries (including the hunting of primates such as monkeys and chimpanzees, too as other mammal and reptile species)

Agriculture

• After the 2d globe state of war, there was a massive change in how food was produced
• There was a need to produce more nutrient, at a quicker charge per unit
• It was then that modern farming practices began:
  • Farms became more specialised so they grew only i crop or raised one type of livestock (monoculture)
  • There was a switch to growing cereal crops rather than vegetables
  • Fields were made bigger to adjust machinery via the removal of hedgerows and stonewalls
  • More land was made [popover id="lhAA-sgoHZZD_Co4" label="abundant"] past draining wetland and filling in ponds
  • The use offertilisers and pesticides massively increased
• Well-nigh of these mod farming techniques have had a major negative bear upon on the level of biodiversity present in farmed areas
  • Monocultures support much lower levels of biodiversity compared to natural habitats or even natural grazing land (that has a large variety of plant species present which can support a much greater range and number of insect species and bird species)
  • Hedgerows stand for an of import habitat for many insects, modest mammals and birds, which tin can nest there. Equally hedgerows are being increasingly removed, this habitat and the biodiversity information technology supports is lost
  • Fertilisers can leach into waterways, causing eutrophication, which can lead to the death of many aquatic invertebrate and fish species
  • Pesticides (e.g. insecticides) used on crops kill insect pests but also kill many non-target species, including of import insect pollinators similar bees

The decline of the bumblebee

• Bumblebees are essential pollinators that pollinate wildflowers and valued crops such as oilseed rape and peas
• Nigh a quarter of the European bumblebee species are threatened with extinction
• In that location has been a very rapid decline in bumblebee numbers in recent years
• Bumblebees require habitats with a big number of flowering plants to ensure a supply of pollen and nectar all twelvemonth round. Examples of this are hedgerows, field margins and grasslands
• It has been suggested that the extensive farming of crops and the utilize of pesticides are contributing to this decline
  • The monoculture of crops reduces institute multifariousness for bumblebee habitats
  • Although they are not the target species, pesticides can have a negative consequence on bumblebees

Biodiversity vs turn a profit

• A high yield and profit are two factors that make farming economically viable
• Farming practices that maintain or increment biodiversity can be expensive, labour intensive, time-intensive. They can also reduce the yield of crops and livestock
  • For example, if a farmer stops using pesticides on crops, the number of bumblebees will increase simply the number of pest species that destroy crops volition also increase which will reduce ingather yield and profit
  • This means that the farmer will have to accuse more for his produce, in what is a very competitive market
• It is difficult to find the balance between conservation and farming due to these knock-on effects

Climate change

• Human-acquired climatic change is causing weather patterns to change and the frequency of extreme atmospheric condition events, such as hurricanes, typhoons, floods and droughts, to increase
  • Information technology is feared that climate change is now occurring too fast for many species to be able to adapt to these changes, which could result in many species condign extinct and a major decline in biodiversity
• Global warming (a result of climate change) is causing many species to move towards the poles or to higher altitudes
  • However, these species may not be able to compete with, or may even out-compete, the species already present in these habitats, with either result leading to decreased biodiversity
  • Some species (such as plant species) may not be able to move or alter their distributions fast enough to suit to increasing temperature and may get extinct as a result
• Global warming (and the human-generated CO₂ that is the primary cause of this) is too threatening marine biodiversity:
  • Increasing atmospheric CO₂ is leading to more CO₂ dissolving in seawater, decreasing its pH (known as ocean acidification). This is negatively affecting organisms that require calcium carbonate for shells (due east.g. plankton and coral polyps)
  • Increased bounding main temperatures have besides led to an increased frequency of coral-bleaching events, where the tiny organisms that live within corals and help keep them alive leave due to temperature stress. Without these organisms, the corals dice and are broken downward, somewhen leading to the loss of whole coral reefs and every bit a result, the loss of the huge corporeality of biodiversity that depends on them

Factors That Influence Biodiversity Include,

Source: https://www.savemyexams.co.uk/a-level/biology/ocr/17/revision-notes/4-biodiversity-evolution--disease/4-2-biodiversity/4-2-7-factors-affecting-biodiversity/

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