Reasons to maintain biodiversity Flashcards
What are the 3 main reasons to maintain biodiversity?
Aesthetic, economic and ecological
What is the aesthetic reason for maintain biodiversity?
The presence of different plants and animals enrich our lives
What are examples of aesthetic reasons for maintaining biodiversity?
Th natural world provides inspiration for musicians and writers and patients recover more rapidly from stress and injury when supported by plants
What is the economic reason for maintain biodiversity?
If biodiversity in a ecosystem is maintained, levels for long term productivity are higher
What are examples of economic reasons for maintaining biodiversity?
Industrial reasons, preservation of ecosystems, farming, manufacturing and economically beneficial
What are examples of industrial reasons to maintain biodiversity?
Deforestation may cause soil erosion reducing crop growth and resource dependence, non-sustainable removal of resources will lead to industry collapse and plant varieties for cross breeding can provide better characteristics to make crop plants and animals more efficient, reducing land required to feed people
What are preservation of ecosystem reasons for maintaining biodiversity?
Continuous monoculture results in soil depletion so ecosystems become more fragile to insects, competitors and microorganisms and high biodiversity protects against abiotic stress including extreme weather as a change in conditions could destroy an entire crops
What are farming reasons for maintaining biodiversity?
Farmers become more fled ant on expensive pesticides, herbicides and fertilisers to maintain productivity
What are economically beneficial reasons for maintaining tourism?
Areas rich in biodiversity are attractive which promotes tourism, species with economic importance could become extinct as undiscovered species could be chemically or medically useful and the greater the biodiversity, the greater the potential to manufacture different products which may be beneficial to humans
What are ecological reasons to maintain biodiversity?
All organisms are interdependent on others for their survival so the removal of one species may have signifance effect on others
What is an example of an ecological reason to maintain biodiversity?
Keystone species affect many other organisms in an ecosystem and help to determine the species richness and evenness in the community so essential to protect
What is beneficial human grazing?
The natural habitat is created by human intervention and the management of land
What are examples beneficial human activity?
Farming, grazing, planting of hedges and forest management
