Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
in south-east Asia, central America and the Amazon will become
savanna and some of the Mediterranean chaparral will also become
savanna. The models also suggest that evergreen forest will replace
grasslands in parts of North America and Northern Europe. Of
course the whole picture is quite complex because plants may grow
better with more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and also pollu-
tion that adds nitrogen to the atmosphere may provide more
nitrates and ammonia for plants, enabling better growth in some
systems.
Humans quite like to keep environments in a static form and
often conservation of an environment tries to protect a status quo.
However, climate change may mean that biomes have to shift and
migration of plants and animals will occur. Humans who try to
'maintain the line' and keep an ecosystem operating in a less than
ideal climate will struggle against a changing climate. Therefore,
climate change will represent a significant challenge for conservation.
Conservation
Conservation can mean different things to different people. An
important species to protect for some may be a pest to others. Con-
servation motives can include ethical concerns, a desire to protect
something because it looks nice and enriches our lives, a need to
maintain genetic diversity, the need to keep systems complex so they
are more robust to environmental change, and economic incentives
such as safari tourism or potential medicine or new food sources.
Conservation management may be focused at the ecosystem, habitat
or species level. Strategies can involve legislation to ban the hunting
of a certain creature or even banning human entry into special
reserves. Ensuring there are corridors for species to travel between
patches within ecosystems can be another strategy for conservation.
Effort can be put into conserving the status quo, by reintrodu-
cing species or function back into an ecosystem to try to restore it.
There may also be special strategies to try to ensure there is a large
gene pool to protect against environmental change. Since many
domesticated crops and animals would not survive in the wild there
is concern that a disease or other disaster may come along that
destroys those domesticated species and we would not have enough
of the more robust wild ancestors left from which to develop the
