Question

Question 1: Biodiversity and Ecosystem Health (20 points) a) Describe two ways of measuring biodiversity. Explain the relationship between biodiversity and ecosystem stability. As part of your explanation, discuss how susceptibility to disease in agricultural crops and in isolated tribal human populations provides evidence that supports this idea. (5 points)

Answer 1

Answer:

explanation below

Explanation:

A) Biodiversity is simply known as the number and variety of organisms found in a definite environment or region.  Scientists have devised several ways of measuring biodiversity and the methods to be used depend on the type of organisms they are to count.  

Canopy fogging – one of the ways of measuring biodiversity, has remained an effective way of obtaining details about the biodiversity of insects.  It involves the act of spraying  low dose of insecticides on a tree top, and when the insects fall from the trees, they are being collected on a large screen, that looks like a funnel.  

Transact sampling is another way of measuring biodiversity and this time, with a transact line. The transact line is usually a measuring tape or rope that has been marked at set intervals.

b) Ecosystem stability is the ability of the ecosystem to maintain its steady state, even after it has experienced stress or disturbances.  The biodiversity of an environment makes huge impact on the ecosystem stability in that particular area. It has been known that certain areas that have high levels of species and genetic diversity, are more likely going to an ecosystem that is complex, with varying food webs and biotic interactions. The increase in this complexity makes it more likely that the ecosystem of that area will rightly move back to a stable state whenever disturbances are experienced.

There are evaluated scientific evidence that shows that reduced biodiversity affects the transmission of communicable disease in agricultural crops, animals and humans. Loss of biodiversity usually increases susceptibility to diseases in plants and humans.