The growing human population plays a big part in affecting the environment. Since they’re more people, there are more resources to meet each individuals needs.
It has been predicted that ten percent of the ecoregions in Canada are in risk of losing biodiversity because of habitat removal. Changing lands to agriculture might give you a loss of short grass prairie habitat. In some parts of Canada, most wetlands have been drained, which is a major threat to biodiversity because these habitats are rich in species.
Over Harvesting
Over harvesting has a great affect on biodiversity. Habitat loss often occurs as well. Removing an organism from its environment can have impacts on the environment. Humans have always shown incautious cares against plant and animal species. This exploitation can lead us to a predictable problem: species harvested from the wild can encourage more people to get involved in its extraction. Similar problems have been analysed by the fishing industry, and the logging industry. The results always end up exactly the same: population crashes, or at worst it can end in global extinction.
Three main problems of biological resource extraction are:
a) Too many people who want the resource
b) Lack of information about the ecology
c) Life-histories of populations being harvested
Plants and animals can’t handle sudden changes in temperature and climate. Climate has varied within short time. Right now we are in a period of high climatic unpredictably. What can this do to biodiversity?According to reports there has been evidence of increased UV, damaging agricultural crops, and organisms in wetlands. The effects differ, according to each specific vegetation zone.Examples:
Tundra Zone- Can possibly shrink with the increasing temperature.
Algae and aquatics can possibly disappear with the water getting warm.
Increasing water temperatures will hugely change ecology’s freshwater ecosystems and wetlands. Effects of global warming points to two major facts:
- Speed of change is much faster than in the past, which is a serious threat to slow-growing communities that aren’t able to respond as fast, which may shrink some plants that need cooler environments.
- Global warming can cause frequent climatic conflict such as fires, storms, etc.
Humans Activities and impacts on Biodiversity
Agriculture, forestry, and fishing are a few contributors to have a large impact on some areas.
Agriculture
Agriculture has huge effect on biodiversity because of its popularity over the landscape, mainly in the southern regions of Canada. Some effects are the habitat modification, pollution from pesticides and fertilizers.
Fishing
Fishing does not have a major impact but it can affect the aquatic zones through, nutrient add-ons, introduction of exotic fish, and pollution
Forestry
Forest does not play a major role either, but by cuttind down trees, and adding new soils can ruin the habitats for wildlife animals. By cutting down trees, it will take years to fully grow again.
Sources
http://www.nature.com/embor/journal/v8/n4/full/7400951.html
http://redpath-museum.mcgill.ca/Qbp/3.Conservation/impacts.htm#2.1.3
http://www.ecology.org/biod/population/human_pop1.html
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