Shane Bridges
Ecology Paper for ED503
How Can We Protect the Ecosystem We Live In Better?
For years, the ecosystems around the world have been vastly affected by human actions
such as dependency and degradation. We use the natural resources to a point that they are in
danger of extinction and pollutants have degraded the quality of many ecosystems like the
marine, tropical, and urban zones. While there is a heavy debate on how to improve or restore
ecosystems, few will argue that these zones are unaffected by human activities. Some of the
ideas tossed around involve using machines or vehicles that emit fewer pollutants, using less of
certain products to restore or rebuild an abundance of resources, use less trees and replant those
that have been removed, and the attempts to recycle items that can serve multiple purposes.
These are all important ways of improving ecosystems that surround us, but we must all make an
effort to all do at least one thing daily that can improve our surroundings and those of animals
that we negatively affect inadvertently.
When a person looks out their window, the many sites that they see make up their
ecosystem. If you live in a rural town, there may be animals, few houses, and minimum traffic.
For those in an urban environment, there are more vehicles or factories that cause pollutant
emission, but both are equally affected by human actions. Vehicle emission, littering, improper
dumping, and wasting of resources such as trees, recyclable items, or fuel all contribute to
degradation and increase individual dependency on obtaining more of a depleted source. In their
article “Increased Dependence of Humans on Ecosystem Services and Biodiversity,” the three
authors researched whether humans had become more dependent on ecosystems or biodiversity
following economic development . Their studies show that services such as wood production,
hydropower, and tourism are perfect examples of the increased dependence that humans have on
biodiversity and economic services (Guo, 6). The increased profits from these services affect
others as we demand more supply, which limits the resources. However, Richard Hobbs and
others in their article “Intervention Ecology: Applying Ecological Science in the Twenty-first
Century,” maintain that humans have misunderstood the concept of restoration and do not
understand the limitations, which can make the situation worse. The authors argue that we lack
understanding of how ecosystems were at certain points of time or history (Hobbs, 443). So does
this mean that we should improve or restore ecosystems in a way that improves them and does
not take them back to how they were originally? This is part of the ongoing debate, but any
restoration is better than a complete demolition of resources for economic gain.
In their article “Ecosystem Services: Exploring a Geographical Perspective,” authors
Marion B. Potschin and Roy H. Haines-Young argue that the economic services are more of a
political agenda than a scientific issue. Potschin states that debates over maintenance and
enhancement of ecosystem services are viewed as the fundamental part of any or every strategy
when dealing with future environmental change or restoration (Potschin, 577). This is largely a
problem with the lack of improvement because there is a sense of how to improve these services
and less concern over the ecosystem as a whole. In order to truly improve ecosystems we must
worry less about economic or personal value and focus more on eliminating contributors to
degradation and dependency. In their article “The good(ish), the bad, and the ugly: a tripartite
classification of ecosystem trends,” the authors break down ecosystems into three states:
improving, stationary, or deteriorating and looks at the indicators to determine how eliminating
contributors affected the ecosystems (Bundy,757). This is a good way to approach restoration as
we can see whether our results improve or hinder the ecosystem.
While there is debate politically and scientifically about the need to restore ecosystems
and how to limit degradation, we all see the need to start improving our ecosystem. Those people
who do not depend on economic services financially or excessively are more likely to view more
alternatives that can lead to improvements. We should try to remember that a dependency on
resources can negatively impact the environment and our neglectful or inappropriate actions such
as deforestation, polluting, and littering only makes the ecosystem worse. We must not recreate a
previous ecosystem just improve on the current one.
References
Bundy, Alida. Shannon, Lynne, Rochet, Marie-Joelle, Neira, Sergio, Shin, Yunne-Jai,
Hill, Louize, and Aydin, Kerim. “The Good(ish), the Bad, and the Ugly: a Tripartite
Classification of Ecosystem Trends.” ICES Journal of Marine Science / Journal du Conseil. Vol.
67 Issue 4. (May 2010) : p 745-768.
Hobbs, Richard J., Hallett, Lauren, Ehrlich, Paul R., and Mooney, Harold A.
“Intervention Ecology: Applying Ecological Science in the Twenty-first Century.” BioScience.
Vol. 61 Issue 6. (Jun 2011): p442-450.
Potschin, Marion B. and Haines-Young, Roy. “Ecosystem Services: Exploring a
Geographical Perspective.” Progress in Physical Geography. Vol. 35 Issue 5 (October 2011):
p575-594.
Zhongwei Guo, Lin Zhang and Yiming Li. “Increased Dependence of Humans on
Ecosystem Services and Biodiversity.” PLoS ONE. Vol. 5 Issue 10, (2010): p1-8, 8p.