Short Summary Essay On Biodiversity

Biodiversity is the foundation of ecosystem services to which human well-being is intimately linked. No feature of Earth is more complex, dynamic, and varied than the layer of living organisms that occupy its surfaces and its seas, and no feature is experiencing more dramatic change at the hands of humans than this extraordinary, singularly unique feature of Earth. This layer of living organisms—the biosphere—through the collective meta¬bolic activities of its innumerable plants, animals, and microbes physically and chemically unites the atmosphere, geo-sphere, and hydrosphere into one environmental system within which millions of species, including humans, have thrived. Breathable air, potable water, fertile soils, productive lands, bountiful seas, the equitable climate of Earth’s recent history, and other ecosystem services are manifes¬tations of the workings of life. It follows that large-scale human influences over this biota have tremendous impacts on human well-being. It also follows that the nature of these impacts, good or bad, is within the power of humans to influence.

Biodiversity is

Because the multidimensionality of biodiversity poses formidable challenges to its measurement, a variety of surrogate or proxy measures are often used. These include the species richness of specific taxa, the number of distinct plant functional types (such as grasses, forbs, bushes, or trees), or the diversity of distinct gene sequences in a sample of microbial DNA taken from the soil. Species- or other tax on-based measures of biodiversity, however, rarely capture key attributes such as vari¬ability, function, quantity, and distribution—all of which provide insight into the roles of