Biodiversity

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  • Created by: S_Bluck
  • Created on: 27-02-18 14:13

Biodiversity

-Having as wide a range of different species as possible.

-Maintaining biodiversity is an important part of using the environment in a sustainable way.

-Indiscriminate use of the environment, for example cutting down large areas of the rain forest to grow crops such as soya, results in a large number of species becoming extinct and reduces biodiversity.

It is only now that we are beginning to realise the potential medicines and crops that we can obtain from a wide range of different organisms. Only by maintaining biodiversity can we be sure that these benefits will be available for future generations.

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Monoculture

-Continuos production of one type of crop that is often genetically uniform. Doing this in a large field means harvesting by machinery can be done efficiently.

Disadvantages to monoculture.

-If pests and disease attacked the crop it could harm it easily, so farmers use a lot of chemical pesticides.

-This can harm the environment and so is not viewed as sustainable. Using large fields and pesticides reduces the variety of species. This hinders biodiversity.

-If a natural disaster were to occur, the whole crop could be wiped out.

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Improving Sustainablility

-Packaging can be a major environmental problem.

-The use of biodegradable packaging is an option to tackle this problem. When put in a landfill site it should decompose quickly, unlike a lot of currently used packaging.

However, to decompose in a way that only produces carbon dioxide oxygen needs to be present, but in landfill oxygen is often not present. This results in the production of a powerful greenhouse gasmethane being produced if decay occurs at all.

-Another possible solution is to recycle the packaging.

-The materials and energy used in production, energy used in transport and pollution created are all considerations when trying to improve sustainability.

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Biodiversity Overview

Millions of different living things inhabit the Earth. This wide variety of life is called biodiversity. Biodiversity is important and so we must use the Earth in a sustainable way to ensure we maintain a good level of biodivesity in living things and species.

Classification at different levels

Organisms are classified into different groups. This classification is done according to similarities and differences in characteristics including:

  • physical features
  • DNA.

Organisms are classified at different levels. These levels can be arranged in an order, progressing from:

  • a large group containing many organisms with a small number of characteristics in common, such as a kingdom
  • a small group containing fewer organisms with more characteristics in common, such as a species.

This classification of both living and fossil organisms helps scientists to make sense of the diversity of organisms on Earth, as well as to suggest evolutionary relationships between them.

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