ENV100Y5 Chapter Notes - Chapter 9: Gross National Income, Reconciliation Ecology, Invasive Species

• School: UTM
• Department: Environment
• Course: ENV100Y5
• Professor: Monika Havelka

Document Summary

Biodiversity provides goods and services: provides food, shelter, fuel, purifies air and water, detoxifies wastes, generates and renews soil fertility, pollinates plants, controls pests and disease, maintains genetic resources, provides culture and aesthetic benefits, allows us to adapt to change. Organisms provide drugs and medicines: plants: in response to herbivory, they produce: cyanide, caffeine, cocaine, mescaline, nicotine, atropine, strychnine, morphine, quinine, codeine, digitalis, and many more. Incentive to preserve natural areas and reduce impacts on the landscape and on native species: particularly beneficial in developing countries, thus, preserving biodiversity is economically important. Biodiversity helps maintain ecosystem functions: biodiversity increases the stability and resilience of communities and ecosystems, decreased biodiversity reduces natural system"s ability to function and provide services. Species diversity: abundance= number of individuals, richness= number of different species, evenness= distribution of abundance over species. These three measures can be used to describe species richness: Alpha- diversity= # of species in local area of homogeneous habitat.