Selected Habitats (CoB) Flashcards
What conservation efforts go towards Antarctica?
- The Antarctica Treaty
- Fishing is highly regulated
- Tourism is highly controlled
- Military activity is forbidden
- Resource exploitation is not allowed
What are the threats to Antartica?
- Global climate change causing ice melt
- Rising sea temperature
- Strong winds
- Ozone depletion
- Tourism
- Overfishing
What is the importance of Antartica?
- Stores 70% of earth’s fresh water
- Carbon sequestration from krill and algae
- Good for astronomical resource due to little air pollution
- Unique wildlife
What are the ecological features of Antarctica?
- Large landmass
- 98% covered by thick snow and ice
- average temp of -49
- low precipitation
- abundant marine life but little terrestrial life
- loads of upwelling
- large seasonal variation and changes
What conservation efforts go towards mangroves?
- Protected areas
- Natural colonisation
What are the threats to Mangroves
Aquaculture, urban and port developments
What are the importance of mangroves?
- Trees provide a good habitat for a number of creatures
- Protect from coastal erosions
- Work as good fisheries
- Traps suspended solids that could harm reefs
- Provides timber
- Medicinal resources
- Huge carbon sink
What are the ecological features of mangroves?
- Dominated by halophytic trees that live in intertidal water
- Saline, anaerobic conditions
- Stormy
- Varying extremes in both temperatures and water availability
What are the threats to Oceanic Islands?
- exploitation of endemic species
- Introduced or invasive species
- Habitat change like urban or agricultural development
What is the importance of Oceanic Islands?
Unique Endemic species with medical or biomimetic features
What are the ecological features of Oceanic Islands?
- Formed from either volcanos or sand build up
- Marine life, birds and floating plants can colonise easily
- Low numbers of mammals
- Endemic species with small populations
What efforts go towards Deep Water Coral Reefs?
Protected areas
What are the threats to Deep Water Coral Reefs?
- Deep water trawling
- Oil and gas exploitation
- Ocean acidification
What is the importance of deep water coral reefs?
They support large biomasses of fish
What are the ecological features of Deep water Coral reefs
- No sunlight so no photosynthetic algae
- Slow growth
- Not always in deep water
What conservation efforts go towards Tropical Coral Reefs?
- Marine Protected Areas
- Fishing quotas and no take zones
- Max and min catch sizes
- Restrictions on fishing methods
- Artificial reefs
What are the threats to tropical coral reefs?
- Physical damage from litter, diving or ghost fishing
- Collection of ornaments and souvenirs
- Oil spills and other water pollution
- Increasing ocean temps
- Introduced species
- Overfishing
- Coastal development
What is the importance of Tropical Coral Reefs?
- Supports 1/4 of all marine species
- Exploitable for food + medicine
- Carbon sequestration
- Coastal erosion protection
- Tourism
What are the ecological features of Tropical coral reefs?
- High biomass
- Many interspecies relationships
- Zooxanthellae/coral polyp symbiosis
What conservation efforts go towards tropical rainforests?
- Legal protection of sites
- Outlawing unauthorised logging
- Debt for nature schemes
What are the threats to Tropical Rainforest?
- Logging
- Subsistence farming
- Commercial agriculture
- Mineral extraction
- Reservoir creation
- Tourism
What is the importance of Tropical Rainforests?
- High Biodiversity
- Forest resources
- Hydrological cycle
- Carbon sequestration
- Oxygen production
What are the ecological features of Tropical Rainforests
- Stable tropical climate
- Very high biodiversity
- High light level
- Warm
- High rainfall
-Little seasonal change
-Very tall, deciduous trees are common
What conservation efforts go towards temperate broadleaf woodlands
- Maintaining ‘Wildwood’
- Coppicing (low-cut) and Pollarding (high-cut)
- Community forests
- Mixed-species woodland
- Legal ‘Ancient’ woodland (existed pre-1600) protection
What are the threats to temperate broadleaf woodland?
- Clearing for urban development
- Clearing for agriculture
- Clearing for mining
- Resulting habitat fragmentation
What is the important of temperate broadleaf woodland?
- High biosdiversity
- Forest resources
- Recreational activity
- Hydrological cycle
- Good carbon sequestering
What are the ecological features of temperate broadleaf woodland?
- No major temperature extremes
- No pronounced dry season
- Deep and fertile soil, bound together by tree roots
- Spring-Autumn tree canopy prevents much floor plant growth
- Lack of food in winter leads to hibernation or food store by animals
