Eutrophication is the naturally occurring process of nutrient enrichment of freshwater and coastal waters. A big cause of this is when farmers are putting fertilizers on their crops and it running off into rivers and streams. The run off sequence happens when the fertilizers are slurrily spread on to agricultural land. This encourages the growth of algae and contributes to the process of Eutrophication.
The effect of these chemicals on wildlife are that fertilizers improve plant growth so animals that live in a `plant habitat or eat plants will have a positive effect as the plants will be perfect in growth and quality. Insecticides are bad for wildlife such as insects as it repels them away from the plants. All the chemicals are bad for the wildlife as they either kill them or are not good for them as they have bad chemicals. These chemicals are on the food that they all eat so the chemicals are getting inside the animals and killing them or making them ill. This can also be classed as bioaccumulation as the plants are absorbing bad chemicals. This makes the food chain suffer as the starters of the food chain are getting infected and are also killing the other animal further along the line that are eating the other animals in the chain so the more they are infected the more animals that are killed later on in the food chain.
Human Habitation
The term greenbelt is a policy or land use designation used in land use planning to retain areas of largely undeveloped, wild, or agricultural land surrounding or neighboring urban areas. In the countries that have greenbelt the development is very restricted. What greenbelt offers to benefit people are, walking, camping, and biking areas close to the cities and towns. Places for wild plants and animals, and cleaner air and water.
A Brownfield site is land previously used for industrial purposes, or certain commercial uses, and that may be contaminated by low concentrations of hazardous waste or pollution and has the potential to be reused once it is cleaned up.
The existence of greenbelts help to increase biodiversity as they are in force to control the area of land that plants and living organisms are occupying. When greenbelts place a policy on parts of land they own that land and use it to increase plant growth and other things such as keeping habitats going for animals. In some cases types of land they have been undeveloped and not looked after the greenbelt will put a policy on that land and look after it for the sake of nature.
Some of the problems in developing Brownfield sites are many as there could be different sorts of problems with the land that will be used to make the Brownfield site. For example the land may be very contaminated and before building on the Brownfield you will have to deal with the contamination first. This can be very dangerous as you do not know how contaminated the land is and it can be a health and safety risk to yourself and others. This can lead to spending a lot of money on proper people to deal with the contamination as Brownfield users sometimes look to the government for grants to help them do this. Cost is a big problem as the companies are going to want to know how much it is going to cost to get the land up to regulatory requirements so it is people friendly in other terms.
The sort of animals that marshland is an important habitat for are crocodiles as they eat large animals, fish, reptiles and amphibians and by them doing this they keep animals level steady. The marshland is important for a lot of birds such as osprey and the peregrine falcon as they feed off the fish in the marshland and use the water to drink from and stay cool. The sort of plants that are important to marshlands habitat are grasses, rushes, reeds, typhus, sedges and other herbaceous plants as they all use the shallow water of the marshlands to grow and stay alive. These are also important for the herbivorous animals in the area as they use these plants to live off and eat from.
The effect of draining a marshland on biodiversity would be terrible as it would be destroying a habitat that holds many plants and animals. This could also kill many animals and almost wipe out all of the plant life that lives around there. For example by taking away the water you are taking away the water that the animals such as fish need to live and other such as birds and crocodiles to drink off and use to cool themselves down as marshlands can get very warm in some countries. When the marshlands do get warm it is used even more by animals and is perfect for the plants to do photosynthesis.
This breakdown shows how much waste and money that was spent on waste during 06/07 period of the year.
The environmental problems that a landfill sit can cause are the release of harmful gases to the atmosphere. When waste is being burnt is release carbon dioxide with destroys the atmosphere, this has lead to global warming and change of weather as too much carbon dioxide is being lead to the atmosphere and damaging the control of the weather. Also by digging up holes in the ground and dumping waste in them it is giving up land that can be used for more practical reasons such as more shops or houses. There is an effect on biodiversity as the harmful gases that are released are changing the weather from hot to cold and cold to hot so this will mess about will animals temperature as they may need to stay in a hot climate but if that climate is experiencing too much cold weather then the animal will move on too a warmer climate to be in a temperature that suits itself.
Biffa can reduce the impact of their landfill sites by encouraging a lot more recycling, this will make us re-use more and use the landfills much less. They can also make recycling bins bigger than normal size bins, this will again leave less waste as people will have no room to get rid of normal waste and encourage them to recycle a lot more.
Greenhouse Gas Production
The gases that are leading to global warming are:
Carbon dioxide – this is a chemical compound composed of two oxygen atoms covalently bonded to a single carbon atom.
Methane is a chemical compound with the molecular formula CH4. It is the simplest alkane, and the principal component of natural gas.
Nitrous oxide is a chemical compound with chemical formula N2O. Under room conditions, it is a colorless non-flammable gas, with a pleasant, slightly sweet odor and taste.
Ozone is a triatomic molecule, consisting of three oxygen atoms. It is an allotrope of oxygen that is much less stable than the diatomic O2.
Water vapor is the gas phase of water. Water vapor is one state of the water cycle within the hydrosphere. Water vapor can be produced from the evaporation of liquid water or from the sublimation of ice.
The greenhouse effect is the process in which the emission of infrared radiation by the atmosphere warms a planet's surface.
The natural processes that contribute to the increase of CO2 in the atmosphere are human respiration, fossil fuel burning and bio mass.
What humans do in the course of their everyday a life that may lead into an increase in CO2 in the atmosphere is respiring.
These two sources of methane release significant amounts of methane. They are natural sources that are released and cannot be stopped as cattle poop and rice fields are things that cannot be taken away from us. These natural sources release 40% of methane emissions into the atmosphere whereas humans release 60%.
The contribution of iron and burning of fossil fuels greatly contributed to the greenhouse gases as they release gases the gases which are already greenhouse gases so it increases the amount and damages the atmosphere even more. So by burning less of these two processes it will help to reduce the levels of greenhouse gases because at the minute they are raising the levels which are not good. The effects of burning of the fossil fuels on biodiversity are that the gases released can threaten extinction by genetic pollution. This can lead genetic swamping and that leads to homogenization or replacement of local genotypes as a result of either a numerical or fitness advantage of introduced plant or animal.
Bibliography
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I found this website very useful as it gave me a wide selection of definitions of biodiversity and also examples to help pick out specific information about biodiversity. I got almost every definition from this site and took the information and put in my own words.
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I found this website really helpful when doing the section on monoculture as it explains in detail what monoculture is and gives examples and pictures to help understand the topic.
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This was another site that helped me on understanding what biodiversity is and giving examples.
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This website was very useful on human habitation and habitats; it showed pictures and gave examples and definitions.