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Human impacts on ecosystems
Human impacts on ecosystems
Human impacts on ecosystems
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Humans are going to be the end of the world. Ever since humans turned to machines for help, it's caused disastrous results on the planet. We pollute the atmosphere, kill off countless species without a second thought, and continue to destroy the planet and everything on it. Due to these actions, many plant and animal species, including humans, could be driven to extremely small numbers and quite possibly extinction, due to the 6th mass extinction, caused mainly by human influence. It may be true that extinction can help the environment, though by lowering population sizes so overcrowding doesn’t ensue, or to give to the new, better species. However, extinction rates have skyrocketed lately as scientists have noticed, with species being lost at 1,000-10,000 times greater than normal. This means that thirty to fifty percent of all species could be extinct by the middle of the 21st century(Center for Biological Diversity) according to research. This increase in extinction is mainly caused by humans. Acts …show more content…
They pollinate plants, which animals eat, in which humans eat. Without them, life would have a very hard time surviving, as 75% of the world’s crops depends on pollination(The bee crisis: a global matter of life or death). But due to mites, poor nutrition, and pesticides, the population of bees suffers from CCD, or colony collapse disorder(New survey shows bees are in trouble. What's being done to save them?). Due to these factors, the honeybee population has declined by almost 50% between 2015-16(Nation’s Beekeepers Lost 44 Percent of Bees in 2015-16). Humans are doing little to none to help reduce this decline in the bee population, but instead worsening the problem. If this problem isn’t soon resolved, then the bees will die, decreasing the amount of plants eaten by animals, decreasing the animal population, which are eaten then by humans, driving the human population to extinction, caused by
Human extinction may occur because of many reasons some may include because of how we take care of our planet and what lives on it. Another may be because of a disease or a fungus we may spread to one another and will not be able to gain control over it. Instead if we try to save what is left our species may go even further and we may be able to live longer. Our own comfortable lives and not really affected as they should be because most people do not care what is going on outside of their own lives. They should be more concerned because it does involve them, they are part of the human
People from all over the world, from every walk of life, regardless of color, age, gender or religious beliefs all have one thing in common, that is to consume food in order to survive. Many places around the world have food scares yet America has access to a lavish selection of crops to choose from. The most nutritious part of any human’s diet is a result of insect pollination. In such manner, pesticide use is causing honey bee colony collapse disorder putting their existence in grave danger and posing major food source shortages.
It is not unusual for bees to die or colonies to be lost, but the nature and extent reported in the year 2006 was alarming. Statistics gathered in the United States alone show that 50-90% of the bees have been lost so far, due to this scientific phenomenon (Cox-Foster et al., 2007, p. 284). Honeybees play a very major role in the pollination of plants and therefore these huge losses have become a serious concern. There are many reasons that have been floated and acclaimed to be behind CCD and they include pesticides, parasites, electromagnetic radiation, malnutrition, climatic changes, and urban sprawl, among many others.... ...
Think for a moment of a world without bees; a world without our buzzing friend. They might look like they barely do much to help our ecosystem. However, bees are a vital part of our agriculture and this makes it vital that we keep them around. The bee population decline in recent years is troubling for both us and our little friends. As their friends, we must do all we can in order to ensure their survival which in turn will ensure our own.
All around the world honeybees are vanishing at an alarming rate, according to the documentary Vanishing of the Honeybees. This film features two commercial bee keepers and their fight to preserve their bee numbers. David Hackenburg was the first commercial bee keeper to go public the bee population was decreasing. Approximately two billions bees have vanished and nobody knows the reason why. Honeybees are used all across America to help pollinate monoculture crops like broccoli, watermelon, cherries, and other produce. Without the honeybees the price for fresh and local produce would be too much money. According, to this film commercial bee keeper’s help fifteen billion dollars of food get pollinated by commercial
Our bees are dying at the highest rates ever recorded: 42 percent of the United States bee colonies collapsed in 2015 (NRDC, 2015). 50 to 80 percent of the world's food supply is directly affected by honeybee pollination (Pennsylvania Apiculture Inc., 2011). Reduced crop pollination will make food more expensive and can even make some crops harder to grow successfully (Worland, 2015).
The worldwide eradication of honey bees may not be too far away. The reasons the honey bees are dying are linked to a number of things. The most common causes are linked to industrial agriculture, parasites/pathogens, and climate change, according to the article entitled “The Bees in Decline” on GreenPeace’s website, SOS-bees.org. However, bee-killing pesticides pose the highest risk to the pollinators (the Bees). Honey bees are not the only form of pollinators.
Bees are known throughout the world as dangerous threats and pests to humanity. Bees when left alone are very important to the growth of all the worlds’ crops and plants; they affect the growth of all the crops plant just as much as butterflies and other pollinators. Humans rely on bees for honey and pollination of plants, but what most agricultural workers don’t know is that they are working on the extinction of the common honey bee by doing simple things in their every day jobs on the farm. With the use of pesticides and other harmful things such as an unnatural diet and cramped living spaces, bees can go extinct and without a large group of pollinators our plants ...
The lives of humans and honeybees have been intertwined for millennia. For at least 8,000 years, humans have sought honey for applications in disciplines ranging from medicine to the culinary arts. But while humans love honey, honeybees provide a much more valuable service: pollination. As the world’s most prolific pollinator, honeybees are essential to the reproduction of many plant species, which in turn benefits other animals and plants. In fact, humans heavily rely on honeybees to pollinate our own food source, a service that is worth billions of dollars a year. Unfortunately, the honeybee population is in a severe and prolonged decline, often in the form of colony collapse disorder, in which entire colonies are seemingly abandoned by adult bees overnight. Honeybees are an indispensable component of modern agriculture, and a failure to discern and address the many causes of honeybee population decline – both manmade and natural – could have disastrous consequences for the environment and human society.
The Apis Mellifera, or honey bee, have survived on this planet for fifty million years. This species of bee is responsible for pollinating flowers, grass, trees and crops around the world. Much of the food we eat is dependent on honey bees for pollination. Our ecosystem depends on the survival of the honey bee. Colonies of honeybees have been disappearing at an alarming rate around the world due to parasites, viral and bacterial diseases, and the introduction of pesticides and herbicides. Over the past six years, on average, 30 percent of all the honey bee colonies in the U.S. died off over the winter of 2012(NPR/TED). If this trend continues to spiral downward, honey bees will disappear from the world. We must understand the importance of the Honey bee and change our environmental practices in order to sustain this vital insect.
Pollinators are very important to the environment because many plant species rely on reproduction to be carried out by pollination1. Bees are dependent on plants for pollen and nectar and in return, are the most common pollinator of plant species and around 90 percent of plants require pollination by an animal7. Bees are used in farming, both for pollinating crops and for producing honey, and the estimated value of bees to the United Kingdom is £400 million per year9. Plants are the primary producers in many food webs and, as so many are dependent on pollination in order to reproduce, a decline in pollinators would have a detrimental effect to whole ecosystems. Therefore, the declining numbers of pollinators, particularly bees, are a cause of concern because of the environmental knock-on effects. High declines in adult bee numbers in some colonies have been reported and this decline is known as colony collapse disorder6. These declines are higher than normal and can go unnoticed by bee keepers because the bees do not generally die in the nest so the decrease is not immediately obvious. The problem addressed in this paper will be the decline of bees and the effects this decline has on the environment. The solutions proposed for this problem are increasing research, managing farming and spreading awareness. It is important to conserve the bee populations before the problem of decreasing pollinator numbers becomes too great to fix.
Humans are destructive. Not a lot of us think about how what we do affects the world around us. We almost act like we are the only ones on this planet. We go around polluting and destroying our world with no regard for our actions. The things that live out in the wild are paying the price for it. Every day that passes there is another animal or plant that is placed on an endangered list. This is happening at an alarming rate. Because of man’s desire to expand and conquer their surroundings, there are animals and plants that are on the brink of extinction that will not be around for our kids and future generations to enjoy if something is not done about it now. This problem has been going on for hundreds of years. There are animals and plants that can only been seen in paintings or early photography. It is because of our early ancestors that we have this problem today and we have to do more to prevent more animals and plants from disappearing forever.
Currently “we are living through the sixth mass extinction, [and] this one is introduced by human activity” (Benton, 2011). As of today scientists have recorded five mass extinctions. While there is no perfect definition for a mass extinction, due to how each differ in so many aspects, a mass extinction is most simply defined as when the number of species on earth drops drastically due to a certain event or cause. The five mass extinctions; the late Ordovician, the late Devonian, the late Permian, the late triassic, and the late Cretaceous all had varying natural causes such as meteorites and extreme weather changes like the Ice age, however “today scientists say we are facing mass extinctions from another cause, humans. (Humans can be primary, 2007)”.
...a faster rate than ever. Data from graphs evidently prove this theory. From the graph the greatest leap of extinction is seen 1920s till now. This trend line is drastically increasing (figure 4). Experts say that approximately half of the world’s current species will be entirely gone by the end of the century, hence proving that we are in the middle of an anthropogenic mass extinction.
Over the past decade bee populations have been dropping drastically. A 40% loss of honeybees happened in the U.S. and U.K. lose 45% of its commercial honeybee since 2010. This is a phenomenon known as Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) in which worker bees from a beehive abruptly disappear in a short time. These data are definitely not meaningless since bees are a crucial part of the reproductive cycle of many foods. The impact bees have on the agriculture and the environment is far more crucial than we may think. Crops rely on bees to assist their reproduction and bring them life. Bees are renowned in facilitating pollination for most plant life, including over 100 different vegetable and fruit crops. Without bees, there would be a huge decrease in pollination, which later result in reduce in plant growth and food supplies. On the other hand, without the pollination progressed with the assistance from bees, the types of flowers According to Dr. Albert Einstein, “If the bee disappears from the surface of the earth, man would have no more than four years to live. No more bees, no more pollination…no more men”. That’s why bees’ extinction affects people more than we ever think, and could even forebode the doom day of human race.