Biodiversity

Most people are familiar with the term biodiversity and they know that it is important if not exactly what it means or why it is important. Biodiversity is simply a measure of how much variation there is in life forms and it is important because it tells us about the health of the ecosystem.

Biodiversity is the degree of variation of life forms that exist in an ecosystem. The reason that biodiversity is important is that it is generally a sign of how healthy an ecosystem is. There are variations in biodiversity based on climate and latitude with the tropical regions supporting many more species than the polar regions do. Nevertheless there should be a significant amount of biodiversity in all regions. The fact that this is not always the case is something that is a concern as the rate at which species are going extinct has been accelerating rapidly in recent years.

The loss of biodiversity is usually the result of species going extinct. There are a variety of reasons that this may happen, evolution is just one. To some extent extinction is natural with certain species not being able to compete and disappearing. Over the history of the earth there have also been five major mass extinctions that have resulted from a major shock like a meteor striking the earth. However the leading cause of extinction is human activity. It has been estimated that the rate at which species are going extinct is now several hundred times what it used to be and that this is the result of human activity.

The reason that you need to be concerned about maintaining biodiversity beyond the fact that it is an indicator of the health of the ecosystem is that it also affects the climate. The big thing here is removing carbon dioxide from the air, this is mainly done by plants and losing them will reduce our ability to do this. Since carbon dioxide is a major greenhouse gas this has a significant impact on our climate. In addition biodiversity also helps with things like air quality, water purification, and pollination. All of these are important to maintaining a healthy environment. In addition many of our largest industries rely on biological sources which means they need to maintain biodiversity to remain strong.

This all raises the question of what to do we do about biodiversity. This is a challenge because the main cause of its loss is human activity. Despite what some people may think we can't just stop all human activity so that we can protect every species. Instead what we need to do is to find a way to minimize the impact that we have on the environment (by opting for green webhosting, using alternative energy sources, driving green cars, ...) so that we can protect as many species as possible. The problem here is that this requires compromise which a lot of people are unwilling to do.