Biodiversity

Imagine this: you step outside and feel the barren, rough, red Earth beneath your feet. There's not a single plant in sight--no rustling of the leaves, no mighty towering trees to block the severe winds, and the scorching heat of the sun searing upon your face because there's no shade. And when you take a whiff of air, you feel nothing filling up the space inside your lungs, liberating your body's activities. What's wrong with this picture? It's not possible, of course. Even though plants aren't the building blocks of life, they're pretty close and without them, most of life wouldn't exist--YOU wouldn't exist. In my research, I will go in-depth about biodiversity--which defines as a quantity of the relative diversity among organisms present in various ecosystems (WordIQ). My research will focus mainly on the importance of plants/concern over plant extinction, rare, threatened, and endangered species, ways to prevent this from happening around our area, among other things.

Why plants are essential to biomass/distress over plant extinction

As you may already know, plants are essential to the biomass through a list of numerous reasons. Plants provide for many important aspects of life, such as oxygen, food, medicines, beauty and tranquility. So what's the agony over just a couple of vanished plant species? Research shows that if plant species continue to decline in major ecosystems, it could lead to the sixth mass extinction on planet Earth.

According to experiments and statistics conducted by scientists, 28 percent of plants have decreased over the last 20 years. These results were supported by extensive destitution of habitats affected by human activities (Ananthaswamy, 2004). Each year, an estimated 17,000 to 100,000 species perish from our planet (World IQ, 2004).

Reasons for US-wise status of rare, threatened, and endangered species and process of listing

Some reasons for these "rare, threatened, and endangered" plant types are caused by nitrogen pollution. Based on recent studies experimented by some UK colleagues of the Open University in Milton Keynes, they found the soil/plant richness of high nitrogen-pollution concentrated areas was much lower than that of low-pollution concentrated areas. These results were drawn from samples taken from 68 different grassland sites. The number of species in each site varied by a wide margin--which ranged from an average of 7.2 to 27.6 species per site (Ananthaswamy, 2004).

Based upon the same experiments and samples taken, it was concluded that the atmospheric nitrogen pollution was caused by the burning of fossil fuels and rigorous agriculture (Ananthaswamy, 2004).

According to the 2004 release of the Threatened and Endangered Species System (TESS) information, there are 599 endangered plants and 147 threatened plants in the US alone (TESS, 2004). These listings rely on a very stern legal system. Whether they can be labeled "rare", "threatened," or "endangered", it is determined by the measure of endangerment the species sustain. An "endangered" type is one that is in jeopardy of extinction throughout all or a major fraction of its range. A "threatened" species is one that is likely to become in danger of extinction in the future (UFWS, 2004).

Ways for prevention of plant dissolution/ rewards

Here in DeKalb County, we have several different threatened plant species. They are: Bay-star Vine, Flatrock Onion, Granite Rock Stonecrop, Indian Olive, Piedmont Barren Strawberry, and the Pool Sprite Snorkelwort. We have one endangered plant: it is the Black-spored Quillwort (UFWS, 2004).

There are over 542 discrete approved ecosystem recovery plans. Some plans cover more than one species while a few have different plans covering various parts of their ranges (TESS, 2004). One organization is the Botanic Gardens Conservation International. It has just recently been added as a participant of the bigger organization of Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF). GBIF strives to allow users to navigate and use the wide selection of biodiversity information, which can be vital to producing economic, environmental, social, and scientific repayments, conservation and study of biodiversity resources (BGCI Online, 2004).

In DeKalb County, there are many programs you can engage in to preserve plants and improve the ecosystem, such as the DeKalb Greenspace--where information on community project assignments is available. Contributed efforts are voluntary, but they can impact a significant deal on park systems.

Some groups you can contact to restore, participate in, and raise environmental awareness issues:

-The Arabia Mountain Nature Preserve and Heritage Area--whose mission is to guarantee that the "natural, historical, and recreational resources of Arabia Mountain and its environs are protected"

-Dunwoody Nature Center--mission is to "develop,