water to drink,….. farmland and water for crops,…
Post on 27-Dec-2015
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And each of these things impacts the plant, animal, and
insect species of the Everglades, by reducing available land and habitat, and
bringing other unintended consequences.
Threat Three: Pollution• “Pollution” refers to any alteration of the
natural environment producing a condition that is harmful to living organisms.
• Pollution may occur naturally (such as when a volcano spews sulfur dioxide), but the term usually refers to some of the effects of human activities; such as automobile exhaust emissions, oil spills, industrial wastes entering the water supply, improper disposal of solid wastes, and so on.
Sometimes pollutiontakes the form of an imbalance in the
levels of nutrients like nitrogen or phosphorous. Excess nutrients may
enter water environments as runoff from agricultural or other operations.
Sometimes a change in nutrient levels causes algae to grow in number (straining the resources of the water) or to become harmful to
animals and people.Pfiesteria –Toxic Phase
Sometimes pollution can spread up a food chain and
bio-accumulate in the tissues of species that are part of the
chain.
Bioaccumulation• Refers to the process in which industrial
waste, toxic chemicals, and the like gradually accumulate in living tissue.
This frog’s deformation was probably caused by pervasive pollution, to which amphibians are very sensitive. Some think this type of deformation may be linked to a hole in ozone layer.
We’ve seen how trade, development, and pollution
affect individual species, but what about “ecosystems”?
For example, the term “food chain” refers to the relationship among different parts of an ecosystem in which some derive food from
others.
There are many such relationships within and among ecosystems. The
future of one species may be linked to the future of all other species.
The Amazon River is very deep and wide—deeper and widerthan the Mississippi River that bisects our own continent.
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