How biodiversity can help maintain a viable ecosystem for resilience to stress and difference between ecosystem resilience and ecosystem resistance?
Biodiversity can help maintain a viable ecosystem for resilience to stress in a number of ways:
- Functional redundancy: When there are many different species in an ecosystem, each species can play a different role in the ecosystem. This means that if one species is lost, another species may be able to take over its role. This functional redundancy helps to buffer the ecosystem against the loss of individual species.
- Genetic diversity: Within each species, there is a great deal of genetic diversity. This genetic diversity allows species to adapt to changing environmental conditions. For example, if a climate change causes a temperature increase, some individuals within a species may have genes that make them more tolerant of the new temperature. These individuals will be more likely to survive and reproduce, and the species will be able to adapt to the new climate.
- Species interactions: Species in ecosystems often interact with each other in complex ways. For example, some species may prey on other species, while others may pollinate each other. These interactions help to maintain the balance of the ecosystem. If one species is lost, it can disrupt the interactions with other species and lead to cascading effects throughout the ecosystem.
Ecosystem resilience is the ability of an ecosystem to recover from a disturbance. Ecosystem resistance is the ability of an ecosystem to withstand a disturbance. Biodiversity can increase both resilience and resistance.
For example, a forest ecosystem with a high diversity of tree species is more likely to be resistant to a fire or insect outbreak. If one species of tree is killed by the fire or insect outbreak, the other species of trees can survive and the forest can recover.
Similarly, a forest ecosystem with a high diversity of tree species is more likely to be resilient to climate change. If the climate changes and some species of trees can no longer tolerate the new conditions, other species of trees may be able to adapt and the forest can survive.
Here are some specific examples of how biodiversity has been shown to increase ecosystem resilience:
- In a study of coral reefs, researchers found that reefs with a high diversity of coral species were more resilient to bleaching events caused by climate change.
- In a study of grasslands, researchers found that grasslands with a high diversity of plant species were more resilient to drought.
- In a study of forests, researchers found that forests with a high diversity of tree species were more resilient to insect outbreaks.
Overall, biodiversity is essential for maintaining viable ecosystems that are resilient to stress.
In an ecosystem resilience perspective, biodiversity protects the properties of a system when particular species are lost by providing functional redundancy. Thus, focus is on species loss and how diverse communities contribute to ecosystem stability. Greater biodiversity in ecosystems, species, and individuals leads to greater stability. For example, species with high genetic diversity and many populations that are adapted to a wide variety of conditions are more likely to be able to weather disturbances, disease, and climate change. Biologically diverse communities are also more likely to contain species that confer resilience to that ecosystem because as a community accumulates species, there is a higher chance of any one of them having traits that enable them to adapt to a changing environment. Biodiversity gives resilience from the microbes that contribute to the formation of the human biome to the genes that help us adapt to stress in the environment supports all forms of livelihoods, may help regulate disease, and is necessary for physical, mental, and spiritual health and social well-being. Resilience refers to ecosystem's stability and capability of tolerating disturbance and restoring itself. If the disturbance is of sufficient magnitude or duration, a threshold may be reached where the ecosystem undergoes a regime shift, possibly permanently. Biological diversity is vital to maintaining life on Earth and to ensuring a clean, safe and sustainable environment. Habitat loss, the spread of non-native species, climate change, pollution and overconsumption all contribute to a decline in the variety of living species and threaten nature as we know it. Although May (1974) showed that increased biodiversity could reduce system stability, recent theory and empirical work have led to the conclusion that increased biodiversity generally enhances ecosystem resilience and stability. In general, resistance refers to the ability of a population (or a community) to withstand the disturbance, whereas resilience refers to the ability to recover after suffering from the disturbance. Resistance, within this framework, is defined as “actions that improve the defenses of the forest against anticipated change, or directly defend the forest against disturbance to maintain relatively unchanged conditions.” Resilience is defined as “actions that accommodate some degree of change, but encourage a return. Distinguish between ecosystem resistance and ecosystem resilience. Resistance is how much a disturbance can affect the flows of energy and matter, while resilience is the rate at which an ecosystem returns to its original state after a disturbance.
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