Chapter 11: Biodiversity See wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biodiversity Biodiversity is the variation of life forms within a given ecosystem, biome, or for the entire Earth. Biodiversity is often used as a measure of the health of biological systems. The biodiversity found on Earth today consists of many millions of distinct biological species, which is the product of nearly 3.5 billion years of evolution
Biodiversity:
Increases stability, robustness to threats, pests, disease
Evolves
Dependent biome structure
Consider:
Costco/Walmart
google/facebook
1918 Spanish influenza
laptops/celphones
Also:
Buffalo from 20 M to 300, whales, others
Evolution NEEDS variation
HPA population is rich, diverse, robust, stable
Amazon basin vs. dustbowl 1930
3M: migration, mutation, mating
5 threats:
habitat loss
overexploitation
introduction of exotic species
predators/pests
deforestation
Global Climate Change (GCC)
Look into FSC wood products
Prototype = tropical rain forest
See also Atlantic Cod issue
Endangered then extinct: seed bank?
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Tie in wherever possible with global footprint and biocapacity...
Concepts: extinction genetic, species, ecosystem BD values: biovalue, economic, ethical threats: habitat loss, invasive species, pests/predators, climate change Fish farm game simulations: see globalfootprint.org footprint calculator trendalyzer ------------ BD: genes, species and ecosystems lost: pop size low/extinct/modified "background extinction rate" now 10,000x developing countries-why? How is this capital depletion? local vs global extinction table 11.1 low pop density, small area, special niche, low repro rates lookup amazon BD impact are humans losing our BD? what color were folks in Bladerunner? genetic diversity: mutations, migration/adaptation, reproductive genetics, population size (e.g. appalachia, whales), selective breeding.
species diversity: "richness" taxonomic and others how diverse are insects? why? think of eucalyptus trees on the way to Hilo: what do you see? see fig 11.3: look familiar? richness: geologic history, migration, size, humans
Ecosystem diversity: look up the big island: how diverse in what land area? Anyone else even close to this? why?
See table 11.3 on estimated value for "ecosystem services" Why is farmed salmon so dangerous? monoculture?
Major human impact: 1. habitat loss 2. exploitation 3. exotic species introduction 4. predator/pest control 5. climate change
see fig 11.7. look up rate of amazon rainforest depletion in acres per hour.
rangeland to grazing: which is more diverse? fig 11.11: look familiar?
Look up KonaBlue here in Kona. What do they do, and why are they facing some opposition? Who owns the company? Ring any bells? You might also look up Kona Kampachi-interesting story.
look up the zebra mussel story: how did this happen? look up cowbirds-is this a symbiotic relationship or something else?
Your generation may be the last to see Polar bears in the wild. Forever. Explain.
why do you think Oklahoma is looking into repopulating the prairie in the native prairie grass, possibly then used as a biofuel in the Fischer-Tropsch process?
Millenium declaration may be on the AP. Good idea to review it.
In the "Poisoned Waters" Frontline video we saw, they mentioned something about BD in Chesapeake bay: what was it?
What is the impact of letting a species get very low in population (like the 17 condors in 1986) on their gene pool? why? Once you get the population to recover (if you can) what is much harder to recover? Any solution for this?
TED videos to watch: jonathan drori nalini nadkarni