Question

List and describe five examples of declining biodiversity

Answer 1

Answer:

1. Deforestation.
2. Overexploitation.
3. Pollution.
4. Climate change.
5. Invasive species.

Explanation:

1. Deforestation: in simple words means clearing of forests for man use such as for making wood fuel, furniture,papers and land land for civilization etc. but these forests plays important role as they are home for most of the world's biodiversity. For example, in the Amazon around 17% of the forest has been lost in the last 50 years, and amazon forest are also known as lungs of planet earth as it produces the maximum amount of oxygen.
2. Overexploitation: basically means harvesting species from the wild at rates faster than natural populations can recover. Over-fishing, over-hunting both are type of overexploitation.
3. Pollution: it can be of various types such as air, water, noise pollution etc. these are serious threat to biodiversity, but in particular nutrient loading into land and water sources, primarily of nitrogen and phosphorus, which is a major and increasing cause of biodiversity loss.
4. Climate change: Its consequences are one of the most important threats to biodiversity and the functions of ecosystems.It includes temperature increases, shifts of climate zones, melting of snow and ice, sea level rise, droughts, floods, and other extreme weather events. Natural systems are vulnerable to such changes due to their limited adaptive capacity.
5. An invasive species is defined as an "Alien species" which means species added to a particular region without their natural existence   whose introduction does or is likely to cause economic or environmental harm. Invasive species are one of the major threat to our environment because they (1) as they can change habitats of other species and can also alter the ecosystem function. (2) they can crowd out or replace native species(species residing their naturally) (3) damage human activities, costing the economy.

Result: Above are the common threat for biodiversity.