Genuine question. I was talking to someone recently and they asked me this and while I had some answers (mentioned below), I didn’t have confidence in my answers.
I know climate change is a threat to biodiversity and that it’s important to preserve it but I was never told why biodiversity is important. Is it to keep ecosystems in check (I feel like this is probably one of the most important reasons)? Is it to just give humans a bunch of species to look at and appreciate? Is it to ensure that if the human population died, some forms of life would remain that would be fit for whatever catastrophe affected human populations and keep life going?
Is it all of these things? Any other reasons?
Thank you!
In: Biology
An example is how many cities in the US, when they were expanding in the 19th and 20th centuries, planted a huge number of American Elm trees because they liked the way they created tree lined streets. These trees were often the only tree planted in neighborhoods.
When the elm bark beetle came along and started spreading Dutch elm disease, many cities lost a large percentage of their tree canopy because the disease spread so easily. This leads to higher temperatures, increased cooling costs and a host of other health problems.
The lack of biodiversity among the trees planted made the problem worse than it needed to be.
These days new cities or neighborhoods with forward thinking planners will plant a good variety of trees to limit the impact of any one disease.
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