What / How is Ecosystem & Biodiversity?

Question

I ever posted similar Q here, and in another hosts, but I was told that “Vegetarian Revolution” is very much commensurate to ecosystem & biodiversity. Especially being a VorV should anyone (or eager enough to) know this matter thoroughly? I belief there is some “real” specialist (or any great soul that could do some study before answering), share their views, do some research service (would be much appreciated) for others to stem from it. Show us the resources, links, or at least tell me the appropriate section that I should post this Q. Thanks.

(Pls kindly ignore the spellign & grammar error).

Answer 1

I'm not sure quite what you are asking here but I shall try to share a little of my knowledge. If I misinterpret your question feel free to annotate your question/email me :)

I am unfamiliar with the term "vegetarian revolution" and am not sure how it is meant to be analogous to ecosystem and biodiversity. However, as a vegan and zoology/ecology student I believe that a plant based diet can play a very important role in repairing some of the terrible changes humans and our lifestyle have made to ecosystems.

Are you asking what is ecosystem and biodiversity? Or are you asking what the "health"/status of global ecosystems/biodiversity is? These are not straight forward questions as even ecologists argue over what these terms mean and how they should be measured.

Ecosystem is used to describe a "unit" of nature which encompasses both the physical and biological components of that unit as well as how these components interact. For example, you could consider a small pond an ecosystem, a lake, a wetland, etc.

Ecosystem health is difficult to measure as often ecosystems as a whole are very robust, coping well with stress and buffering themselves against negative effects... until they reach a threshold point beyond which they "go downhill" very quickly. Alternatively ecosystems can appear to be irretrievably damaged and then "bounce back" successfully.

One way that scientists try to assess ecosystem health is by looking at the number of different types of animals and plants there are present in an ecosystem. This is called the biodiversity of an ecosystem. This assessment assumes that increased biodiversity indicates a healthier/stronger ecosystem (not necessarily true).

Biodiversity itself is tricky to measure. You can have many different levels of diversity: genetic diversity, species diversity, ecosystem diversity. And even if you settle on what type of diversity you want to assess, there are still problems!! For example if you take species diversity. If one ecosystem has many different, but closely related species and another has only a few, very different species: which is more diverse?

As for the state of biodiversity at them moment:

It is generally agreed that while biodiversity (whatever definition you use) is increasing on a local scale i.e. more introduced species around the world results in increasing diversity in the species found in any particular area. However, because many "endemic" species (species found only in one place) are being wiped out by these introduced species, global biodiversity is decreasing.

I've rambled a bit here, not sure if anything answers your question! No links sorry as I have just drawn on a few of the things I have learnt in my studies. If you want to find good web resources, google is your friend :)

Best of luck and I will check this question again a little later to see if you have added any comments/refined your question.

You may also want to try asking your question in the science/environment section.