Subject. Biodiversity and its protection
Lecture 1." BIOLOGICAL DIVERSITY" at present.
1.1.What is Biodiversity?
Biodiversity is the variety of life. It can be studied on many levels. At the highest
level, you can look at all the different species on the entire Earth. On a much
smaller scale, you can study biodiversity within a pond ecosystem or a
neighborhood park. Most people recognize biodiversity by species. Examples of
species include, blue whales, white-tailed deer, white pine trees, sunflowers and
microscopic bacteria that you cannot even see with your eye. Biodiversity includes
the full range of species that live in an area.
The biological diversity consists
of numerous plants, animals and
microorganisms which are different forms of the life in the world, provide the
human's living, a complex ecosystem that forms lively nature and exists in the
landscapes. This is sensitive under an anthropogenic effect, the most important
biological indicator of biosphere which is in the bioms structure.
At the Convension (1992) about the biological diversity - the biodiversity - forms
surface, sea, various water ecosystems and ecological complexes and is a change
of the alive organisms from all the sources. This notion joins diversity that is in
itself, inside sort, between the sorts and in the ecosystem.
Henry Walter Bates used a word combination " Biological diversity" in his work
of "The naturalist on the River Amazon " for the first time in 1892 by observing a
butterfly sort till 700 during an excursion for an hour. On the other hand they
commented that "Biodiversity" term was included in a national forum of "Strategy
of the USA about the biological diversity" by Walter G.Rozen in 1986. The
principal scientific conceptions of the biodiversity were formed by Robert
Whittaker (Whittaker, 1972; 1980) in the second half of XX century. He
structuralized a level of the ecosystem diversity and investigated the biodiversity
dependence on the environment factors.
The biodiversity evaluation in the world was performed during working out of the
zoogeographic and botanical-geographical schemes according to the flora and
fauna repetition degree of the land surface by the geographics in the XVIII- XIX
centuries. In the XX century such schemes were compiled for the plants, animal
groups and biocenosis.
The modern ideas about the biological diversity problem are grounded on the
genetics' population researches in the XX century. The "Biodiversity " notion
began to be used more widely at the Stockholm Conference of UN about the
environment, here the ecologic scientists attained to tan an importance of the alive
nature guarding to the political leaders in the world countries.
1.2.Mutability history (the sorts perising).
There are two processes -sort formation and perishing which are constantly active
in the evolution process. The new sorts and their groups (taxons) which adapt to
the concrete natural condition for all the historical development of the land were
created. The sorts that can't adapt to the new natural condition or subjected to the
unfit environment factors effect perish and are replaced by the sorts which can
easily adapt to the environment . Then any phenomenon that arouses anxiety in the
perishing process of the biological sorts doesn't happen . On the contrary, this is
adopted one of the mechanisms of the evolution process being a legislative natural
phenomenon. Perishing of the sorts didn't create an ecological void, caused
decrease of the fauna in the world. It is a real consequence of the evolution
process (Flint V.E., 2004).
These phenomena occured till the human's creation in the world. The men's
changing natural landscapes totally has continued for a thousand years.
Beginning from the gathering stage of the Paleolit period fauna perishment and
natural plants oppressing are acompanied with the fires, cattle's more grazing ,
forests cutting and so on.
Before 3000 years mastodon, lama, teratorn birds were completely killed in North
America. The largest moa birds more than 20 sorts were killed by Polynesia
populations in Zealand before 1000 years.
No exact information about a quantity and state of some animals doesn't give
chance to utter an objective opinion about their state as a result of human's effect
activity. For the prezent , before 100 thousand years the human’s activity were
resulted in killing of the forest elephants, and rhinoceros , but then giant deer,
woolly rhinoceros and mammoth .
There weren't any scientific ideas about the known animals and birds till edition
of Karl Linnei's book "Nature system" in the middles of the XVII century.
To utter an opinion about a definite animal sort life, behaviour by the scientsts was
adopted a period beginning from 1600th year.
From this period till 1975 ,according to the information of the International
Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) , 74 kinds of the bird (1,23% ) and
63 (1,43 %) kinds of the mammals in the world were killed. The half -kinds of
more animals
(Table 1.1)
and
birds
than
them
were
subjected
to
annihilation.
According to the D.Fisher's information 75% mammal and 86% bird sorts of them
were abolished by the human's activity (Flint V.E., 2004).
Table 1.1. Annihilation of the mammals for 1600-1975.
Century
XVII
XVIII
XIX
XX
Sum
Mammals
Birds
sum
of species
subspecies sum of species
forms
forms
3
3
9
9
11
8
3
9
9
26
18
8
68
34
67
34
33
74
22
107
63
44
160
74
subspecies
34
52
86
Richard Primak (2002) analyzed more constant period till 1600-1995, noted 85
kinds of the mammals and 113 kinds of the birds ,this forms 2,1% of the available
mammals and 1,3% of the birds during the presented period (Table 1.2).
Table 1.2.Annihilation from 1600 up to now.
Taxon
contine
nts
islands
oceans
sum
mammals
birds
reptiles
amphibians
fishes
invertebrates
flowering
plants
30
21
1
2
22
49
245
51
92
20
0
1
48
139
4
0
0
0
0
1
0
85
113
21
2
23
98
384
(By Richard B.Primak (2002)
An
approximate
quantity of the
species
4000
9000
6300
4200
19100
100000+
252000
abolished
taxon
2,1
1,3
0,3
0,05
0,1
0,01
0,2
The highest annihilation rate was noted in the island kinds. The annihilated sorts
in the water canals weren't evaluated at a necessary level because of the
information minority. Though there is no enough exact information about the
extinct _sorts in the world according to UNEP (GEO) presentation at present 24%
of the mammals (1130 kinds), but 12%of the birds (1183) are under totally
abolishing danger. It is commented in GEO-5 report that 2/3 parts of the sorts in
the separate taxons are met with the annihilation danger. Since 1970 a population
areas of the vertebrates diminish 30 %, the living areas of the separate sorts
degraded and reduced 20 %.
Quickly abolishing of the population for last 150 years causes anxiety.
A rate of the mammals and birds annihilation was one sort per each ten years in
1600-1700 yy., but was one kind per each year in 1850-1950 yy. Such high
annihilation rate will create serious complications on biological diversity.
An artificial annihilation of the sorts was directed to the increase of 50-100 times.
This situation creates danger for 5200 sorts of the fauna including one of each
eight kinds of the bird, and 340 000 sorts of the flora. At present 30 % of the main
species of the agricultural animals meets annihilation danger.
The definite differences are formed in an evaluation of the species annihilation
rate. And this depends on various mathematic approach, different indices of
"kind-area" dependence. The species annihilation rate is lower in the zone where
their guarding is organized. Besides, annihilation of the species happens because
of the intensive forests cutting in some countries where the rare species gather.
Since 1963 the International Nature Protection Union has performed International
census ( Red Data Book) of the animals and plants which are in an annihilation
danger.
Here some rates of the danger are divided:
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Extinct (EX)
Entinct in the Wild (EW)
Critically Endangered (CR)
Endangered (EN)
Vulnerable (VU)
Near Threatened (NT)
Least Concern (LC)
Data Deficient (DD)
Not Svoluated (NS)
Threatened
How many species are available in the world?
According to UNEP information there are 4000 kinds of bacteria, 80 000 algae and
single-cell ones, 5200 vertebrates, 1 272 000 invertebrates, 72 000 fungus, 270 000
plants. In general 1 750 000 kinds were fixed and discribed by the taxonomists.
According to the last evaluations a total quantity with the unknown species forms
14 000 000 .
1.3.Is Biodiversity known in the world?
Some researches were performed to define the population's knowledge degree
about Biodiversity.
The researches performed by Eurobarometer (2007) ,IPSOS agency for ethic
biotrade (2009, 2010, 2011) ,the Ministry of the Environment , Food and village
zones development of England determined that the population information about
Biodiversity is poor in general in the different countries.
"Natural vestige" referendum was performed among 1500 children at ages of 5-10
and 1500 parents in England for the purpose of definition of the children's
knowledge about nature by Erbas firm in 2009.
At the same time it was
determined as a result of the referendum performed among more than 10 000
children at the ages of 5-18 from 10 countries that:
-few men don’t understand a meaning of the word "Biodiversity" ,and the people
who understand the meaning approach it from species standpoint but not as
ecosystem.
-the people who were asked abou it don't link it with their life though they
understand that the biodiversity loss is a serious problem.
- the people notify that they are ready to participate in biodiversity guarding as a
sitizen , but they don't know what to do.
As a result of the researches in connection with biodiversity and environment
performed by the Ministry of The Environment,Food and Village Zones
Development in the UK it was determined that a quantity of the respondents
possesing "enough"knowledge about BioDiversity was 20 % in 2009, 18 % in
2011. A quantity of the respondents possesing "Less" information reached from
24% to 30% in 2009; the number of the respondents who hear "only BioDiversity
word " diminished from 21% to 18% ,but the respondents who have no any notion
about it formed 31%.
The different ideas about the people's information were advanced in the last
edition of the "biodiversity barometer" of the union in an honour of ethic biotrade
in May,2011. 65% of the people in the USA and France notified that what they
heard about biodiversity in 2011. This index was 56% in 2009. An average level
of the information about biodiversity is 70% in Brazil, Korea, Japan, USA,
France, Germany and England.
The difference of the information among the countries was noted in ETI
"biodiversity barometer" , the highest knowledge was in France (98%), in Brazil
(93%), in South Korea 78%. Such high knowledge can be related with the
International biodiversity year in 2010. Only one of three respondents could
explain a meaning of Biodiversity.
Literature
https://www.nwf.org/Wildlife/Wildlife-Conservation/Biodiversity.aspx