Environmental studies Habitat Fragmentation

Project description
write a response to this students short essay. What can you ad to the topic. Use at least one source.

This week I chose to focus on habitat fragmentation. I became especially interested in habitat fragmentation after visiting some of the natural parks here in Spain. My first impression of these parks is that there are a lot of roads, fences, railroad tracks, power lines, and man made canals scattered pretty commonly throughout. So even though you may look at a map and see a huge area that is officially protected, this area is really broken up by a lot of man made obstructions that fragment the area considerably.

So the article this week is titled: Effects of Habitat Fragmentation on Biodiversity by Lenore Fahrig from Carlton University in Ottawa, Canada. This is a good paper and covers the topic of habitat fragmentation very objectively, and the author has obviously supported her research with scientific evidence proven in the field. However, the article is quite long, so I chose to focus on the four unique effects of the process of fragmentation, which give one an idea of how important, and detrimental, fragmentation can be on biodiversity (Fahrig, 2003).

There are four effects of the process of fragmentation on habitat: reduction in habitat amount, increase in number of habitat patches, decrease in size of habitat patches, increase in isolation of patches. This makes complete sense when you think about a large forested area that, for example, gets annexed to an urban area and zoned for development. First you will get roads that decrease habitat amount while at the same time taking the area from one large patch to several smaller patches, which become more isolated from one another as development expands. As time goes on all of these four factors are amplified. Understanding these four effects of fragmentation of habitat gives one a tool to help understand what challenges the plants and animals of different patches are going to be facing, and helps conservationists understand the effects of fragmentation.

Another important factor for researchers is which effect they decide to focus on when studying fragmented areas. For example, a researcher may decide to analyze the reduction in habitat amount along with the increase of the number of patches. Researchers may choose, as in this case, to review only several of the four. Or they may choose to use all four factors and decide the effects of all of them (Fahrig, 2003).

Sometimes analyzing all four effects together causes contradictions in the data. The author has tried to reconcile contradictions in the data by recognizing the fact that each factor affects biodiversity in a different way. Therefore, when we look at habitat fragmentation we have to look at each of the four effects. Then we have to focus on how each effect of the fragmentation has affected biodiversity in its own way. This came as somewhat of a revelation to me as I read the article. It shows us how complicated conserving our natural resources can be (Fahrig, 2003).

In summary, when we look at the effects of habitat fragmentation we are focusing on four different effects caused by that fragmentation. After that we need to focus on how each of those effects (habitat reduction, increased patch numbers, increasingly isolated patches, and smaller patches) influence the biodiversity within the fragmented area. After reviewing each of the four effects and then analyzing their unique influence, then researchers can determine the overall impact of habitat fragmentation on the biodiversity of an area (Fahrig, 2003).

Reference

Fahrig, L. (2003). Effects of Fragmentation on Biodiversity . (U. o. Montana, Ed.) Annual Review of Ecological Evolutionary Systems , 34, págs. 487-515.
PLACE THIS ORDER OR A SIMILAR ORDER WITH US TODAY AND GET AN AMAZING DISCOUNT 🙂