The Importance Of Biodiversity And Effects Environmental Sciences Essay

The importance of biodiversity has lack know by peoples. Human is actually relying on the biodiversity to survive because biodiversity provide useful and necessary resources such as food and raw material of medicine. Besides, the biodiversity is important role that working on ecosystem. It is kind of transportation of ecosystem service. The ecosystem provides services such as protection of soil thus the biodiversity loss is related to the reduction of ecosystem services. One of the main causes of biodiversity is deforestation. Deforestation rate increase day by day, the species lose their habitat and lack of food to survive. Human hew the forests to get the resources and also develop the human activities such as agriculture and tourism. More than fifty percent of Asian land area use to develop the agriculture. Human being should find out the solution to improve the biodiversity loss and reduction of ecosystem services. Reforestation improves the rate of deforestation but do not have effects on biodiversity loss. Therefore, human being should understand the importance of biodiversity and the consequences of biodiversity loss to increase the awareness and consideration of human to biodiversity issues.

The importance of biodiversity and effects of deforestation on biodiversity loss

Biodiversity means the species of life on our mother earth and the ecological processes that support the diversity of ecosystems. The goal of this research paper is to understand the importance of biodiversity and the effects of deforestation on biodiversity.

The biodiversity and ecosystem issues compare to other environmental issues, peoples have less consideration to biodiversity issues. As the point above mentioned, the biodiversity is related to the condition of global ecosystem. The species of organisms on earth are facing the threat of habitat loss and extinction. If human do not take any action to improve this situation, we would lose many precious species. There are different areas of species of life in the world such as mammals, reptiles, birds, amphibians, fish and plants. Each of the different species of life has few or more species already extinct. For examples, red colobus monkey, dodo, and phantom shiner. There have no scientists or study can tell us how many species of life are in the world because our mother earth is a complex world and the relevant organizations discover new species to science ceaselessly until now. Therefore, we do not know there is how many species we are losing exactly. There are some experts forecast that the speed of biodiversity loss nowadays is between thousand and ten thousand higher than the natural extinction rate.

Human may not understand well the influence of biodiversity to the entire human race and global ecosystems. Human obtain many resources from biodiversity, such as food, timber, raw materials of medicine and souvenir. In addition of those basic provisions, the biodiversity play the important roles of maintaining the ecosystem of the world. It provides the important services, such as cleaning water resources, protection of soil, reduction of global diseases and dedication of maintain the stability of climate. Biodiversity also contributes social benefits to us like tourism and entertainment development. However, human pay attention to what and how many benefits they can get from the biodiversity and ecosystem, the value of biodiversity and ecosystem would neglected by human.

Nowadays, science has better perceptive to the biodiversity effects and ecosystem services. There are several study of biodiversity effects show that the biodiversity loss is relevant with the reduction of ecosystem services (e.g., Balvanera et al.2006, Cardinale et al.2007, Thompson et al.2009 as cited in Thompson, Okabe, Tylianakis, Kumar, Brockerhoff, Schellhorn, Parrotta & Nasi, 2011). Thompson and colleagues (2009) found that seventy six percent of twenty one studies states that there is direct relationship between the richness of species and the production of ecosystem services. Based on all these studies, the biodiversity play the role of transportation of ecosystem services. Therefore, the damage of biodiversity may influence the cycling of species, and the transportation of ecosystem services. When the ecosystem services reduce, the environmental issues such as climate change will be more serious. From the above points of view, we can understand how important the biodiversity are and human could not survive without biodiversity and ecosystem service.

One of the main reasons that cause biodiversity loss is deforestation. The animals lose their habitat and the biodiversity of forests are damage when deforestation happens. The area which has the highest rate of deforestation is Southeast Asia. According to a study of land use change in Asia, fifty percent of the Asian land is under the development of agriculture or the development of human activities ( Zhao, Peng, Jiang, Tian, Lei & Zhou, 2006) In South Asia, seventy three percent of the land area is used as the development of agriculture. Therefore, the animals have no habitats and enough food to survive. For example, Singapore has ninety five percent of deforestation rate over the past one hundred and eighty three thus there has more than twenty eight percent of species has eliminated. Another country that have high rate of biodiversity loss caused by deforestation is Thailand (Zhao et al., 2006).

Brooks, Mittermeier, Fonseca, Rylands, Konstant, Flick, Pilgrim, Oldfield, Magin &Taylor (2001) stated that “Nearly half the world’s vascular plant species and one-third of terrestrial vertebrates are endemic to twenty five of “hotspots” of biodiversity, each of which has at least one thousand and five hundred endemic plant species. None of these hotspots have more than one-third of their pristine habitat remaining. Historically, they covered twelve percent of the land’s surface, but today their intact habitat covers only one point four of the land.” Based on this article, we can know that the endemic of hotspots are facing the problem of extinction because of the habitat loss. When the habitat areas decrease, the species have highest possibility of extinction problems.

Discussion

As we know that, the biodiversity loss is more and more serious nowadays. Human should find out the solution to reduce the biodiversity loss. To reduce the extinction of biodiversity, we should decrease the rate of deforestation of the world. One of the solutions of deforestation is reforestation. Although reforestation does improve the rate of deforestation, it does not fully renovate the species richness and ecosystem of a forest. There is a study about the value of plantation forests; it finds that the species richness of reforestation is not as abundant as the aboriginal forest (Gardner, Hernandez, Barlow & Peres, 2008). In my opinion, the best way to decrease the rate of deforestation is improve the consideration and awareness of human being.

Government and the relevant organization should encourage peoples to concern about this topic and let children have the concepts of biodiversity and deforestation. Peoples should know well about the seriousness and consequences of biodiversity loss and the reduction of ecosystem thus they will appreciate and conserve the nature. Besides, Government should be stricter in land management to prevent peoples or some companies over extract the forests to acquire self-benefits.

In addition, we can use science to improve the biodiversity loss and reduction of ecosystem services. For example, Sustainable forest management (SFM) is ecosystem management that work on the conservation of environment, such as biodiversity issues. They try to use scientific method to find out the most effective way and translating it into policy to conserve and renovate the biodiversity loss and reduction of ecosystem services (Thompson et al., 2011).

Finally, there are also simple solutions such as do not buy the souvenirs that made of animals, less use of air-conditioner and buy timber from the legal company. Although those simple ways look not as effective as scientific method, peoples should make contribution to environmental issues.

Conclusion

The biodiversity loss has facing the highest rate over the past years. The government and organization of environment should not be the only who responsible to the conservation of environment. Human should have more knowledge about the importance of biodiversity and ecosystem service thus the awareness of human to biodiversity will increase.

Human being should be more intelligent to maintain and protect our mother earth. If the rate of biodiversity loss and reduction of ecosystem continue increase, none of us can endure the consequences. Therefore, human being must be more consideration to this issue. Not only the government, should parents play a good role of model to their children to make the better environment for our next generation.