This weeks articles covered a subject that was extremely interesting and also quite relevant to our class (Quiz on it tomorrow). They discussed how land use is a growing concern for people across the globe. Many forests, marshes, and swamps are being converted into either cities (with impermeable surfaces) or farmland. To get here, the habitats of thousands of plants and animals is destroyed to create a nice and flat surface to construct an Arbies on. This demolishes food webs on a global scale and is causing many ecosystems to collapse or clash with human migrations.
In class, we discuss foresting and the effect it has on nature. If I cut down all the pine trees in my home town to plant coconut trees, all the woodpeckers, owls, squirrels, and insects that lived there have to move somewhere else. The resources in that area will then be strained, which leads to a collapse of the ecosystem due to lack of food, and lots of baby owls trying to figure out where their mom is. Seen here -> https://goo.gl/images/XxHhdm
A question I have relates to mountains. I predict that mountains are the last sort of ecosystem that remains undisturbed by human construction due to their inconvenient terrain. Is this true? I wonder if the populations of mountains have increased due to many species retreating towards them from their demolished homes.
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