ENV100H1 Lecture Notes - Lecture 29: Beta Diversity, Alpha Diversity, Gamma Diversity

• School: UTSG
• Department: School of Environment
• Course: ENV100H1
• Professor: Barbara Murck

Document Summary

If we destroy nature"s pharmacy, it will hurt us. Tourism directed toward exotic, often threatened, natural environmnets, especially to support conservation efforts and observe wildlife. Incentive to preserve natural areas and reduce impacts on landscape and on native species. Organisms are not just valuable because of their services for us, but they have values and rights similar to us. Some countries you can sue on behalf of the environment. Increases stability and resilience of communities and ecosystems. Decreased biodiversity reduces natural systems" ability to function and provide services. Evenness distribution of abundance over species: most ecosystems do not have high evenness, tend to see noneven distribution, some species have more, some less, a few are common, but most are rare. Three measures to describe spatial patterns of species richness. Alpha diversity number of species in a local area of homogeneous habitat. Gamma diversity number of species in a large geographic area that comprises many habitats.