biodiversity and its conservation, Schemes and Mind Maps of Conservation biology

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NAME: RIHAN KHAN

SESSION: 24-

ND SEMESTER

PRESENTATION TOPIC :

BIODIVERSITY

WHAT IS BIODIVERSITY?

 (^) Biodiversity is the abbreviated word for ―biological diversity‖ (bio-life or living organisms, diversity-variety).  (^) Thus, biodiversity is the total variety of life on our planet, the total number of races, varieties and species. The sum of total of various types of microbes, plants and animals (producers, consumers and decomposers) in a system.  (^) Biomes can be considered life zones, environment with similar climatic, topographic and soil conditions and roughly comparable biological communities (Eg. Grassland, forest).  (^) The biomes shelter an astounding variety of living organisms (from driest desert to dripping rain forest, from highest mountain to deepest ocean trenches, life occurs in a marvelous spectrum of size, shape, color and inter relationship).

COMPONENTS OF

BIODIVERSITY?

Biodiversity has three components:  (^) 1. All forms of life: (living things) Including bacteria, fungi, plants, insects, invertebrates and vertebrates regardless of how similar they are to other species or how useful they are to people.  (^) 2. All levels of organization of living things: Includes individual organisms and their genetic material; groups of similar organisms, such as populations and species; and groups of species in communities, ecosystems and landscapes (groups of adjacent ecosystems).  (^) 3. All the interactions among the forms of life and their levels of organization: Biodiversity is more than just the parts of a living system, such as genes, individuals and species -- biodiversity also includes the ways the various parts interact with each other, including competition, predation and symbiosis and other Biological interactions.

KINDS OF BIODIVERSITY

 Genetic diversity: Variety of the genetic make up among individuals within a species. Genetic diversity is a measure of the variety of versions of same gene within individual species.

KINDS OF BIODIVERSITY

 Ecological diversity: Variety of forests, deserts, grasslands, streams, lakes, oceans, coral reefs, wet lands & other biological communities.

IMPORTANCE OF

BIODIVERSITY

The rich variety of genes, species, biological communities, and life sustaining biological & chemical processes: 1.Give us food, wood, fibre, energy, raw materials, chemicals & medicines (All they pour billions of dollars to economy).

2. Provide us with free recycling, purification & natural pest control services.
3. Every species is: (i) Contain genetic information that represents thousand to millions of years of adaptation to the earth's changing environment). (ii) The raw material for future adaptations. Loss of Biodiversity will: (a) Reduce the availability of ecosystem services. (b) Decrease the abilities of species, communities & ecosystems to adopt to changing environmental conditions). Biodiversity is nature's insurance policy against disasters.

BENEFITS OF BIODIVERSITY:

 (^) We benefit from other organism in many ways.  (^) Even insignificant organisms can play irreplaceable roles in ecological systems or the source of genes or drugs that someday become indispensable.  (^) Food: Many wild plant species could make important contributions to human food suppliers either as they are or as a source of material to improve domestic crops. About 80,000 edible plants could be used by human.

BENEFITS OF BIODIVERSITY:

 (^) Drugs and medicine: Living organisms provides many useful drugs and medicines. The United Nations Development Programme derived from developing world plants, animals and microbes to be more than $30 billion per year.  (^) Eg. For natural medicinal products Penicillin – fungus is the source  (^) Antibiotic Quinine – chincona bark - Malaria treatment Morphine – poppy bark – Analgesic Twenty years before, once the drugs were not introduced, childhood leukemia was fatal. Now the remission rate for childhood leukemia is 99%.

BIODIVERSITY LOSS

DIRECT CAUSES Biodiversity loss has both direct and indirect causes. The former include activities resulting in the loss and degradation of habitats, over-exploitation of plant and animal species, agricultural intensification, pollution, invasion by introduced species and climate change.

BIODIVERSITY LOSS

Activities Causing Habitat Loss Habitat loss is the principal cause of the present high rate of global extinctions and poses a severe threat in all biomes (UNEP 1995). There is no ‘safe’ level of habitat loss which would reduce the risk of extinction of some species; no network of carefully selected reserves that would suffice to protect all species

BIODIVERSITY LOSS

Deforestation  (^) The principal cause of deforestation is the consumption of fuelwood and timber. This consumption has already been detailed in relation to trends in forest loss, frag- mentation, and degradation

BIODIVERSITY LOSS

Water Diversion and Drainage The diversion of water for irrigation, and the drainage of wetlands, are major causes of wetland habitat degradation in Pakistan.  (^) The mean quantity of water entering the Indus Basin in Pakistan is 137. million acre-feet (MAF), of which 104 MAF are diverted at the canal head. Thus, three-quarters of the water entering the Indus Basin is now diverted and only a quarter reaches the Indus Delta and the Arabian Sea (GoP and IUCN 1992).  (^) Despite these figures, further diversions are planned e.g. the Ghazi Barotha project

BIODIVERSITY LOSS

Over-exploitation of Plants

 (^) Pakistan is rich in medicinal plants due to its varied climatic and edaphic factors. Of the almost 6,000 species of vascular plants reported to occur in Pakistan, about 1,000 species have been recognized to possess phytochemical properties.  (^) Between 350-400 species are traded in different drug markets of the country and are used by leading manufacturing units of Yunani and homeopathic medicines. A number of medicinal plants and their derivatives, whose cultivation is not feasible in the country, are brought in under a liberal import policy.  (^) Besides this, about 40,000–50,000 tabibs (practitioner of Greco-Arabic medicine), voids (practitioners of Ayurvedic and folk-medicine) and a number of unregistered practitioners scattered in rural and remote hilly areas use more than 200 plants in traditional and folk-medicines.