The Effects Of Human Population On The Environment

Within the last ten years we have noticed a great loss in honeybees around the United States. Between the years 2010 and 2015 the death of bees has skyrocketed. The decline of the honeybees has become a huge issue that should be taken very seriously because of the fact that they are one of the few reasons why and how our crops are grown. One reasons why our honey bees are going extinct is because of the products used in our home, daily. Another reason why our honey bees are becoming extinct is due to the climate change. Even though this seems irreversible, there are many ways we can make a change in the extinction of the honeybees. It may seem as if the need for bees is not as serious as people might make it, but in reality bees are here because they are needed to help us humans survive. With the support from a large percentage of the U.S as a country we will be able to change the outcome of a dying species of much needed animals.

The world is declining in biodiversity, 52% of it is gone. About 1% of the world species go extinct a year. That’s 1’000 to 10’000 species loss. Accompanying it, 19’300 species are endangered. Latin America loss 83% of its wildlife. Over half of Malaysia’s river fish species disappear during deforestation. Half of Australian state governments exploit the uses of national parks. The Alpine suffer dramatic biodiversity loss. The earth is clearly losing biodiversity. This is huge unnoticed threat that we need to address. Mankind depends on the ecosystem which depends on biodiversity. There are changes that need to be made and uphold to prevent difficulties from further escalating. This problem isn’t going to fix itself.

Many of the animals and plants that currently exist in this world are important pillars of the existing economy. Unless no dramatic alterations occur over the next couple decades, most likely, these organisms will continue to play and important role in society. Certain crops, such as corn and tomatoes, as well as animals, such as cows and pigs, serve as important food sources for the ever-growing human population (Extinction: Causes and Consequences, n.d.). Furthermore, insects such as bees are invaluable as they help fertilize food sources and help keep a healthy diet available for people. In the UK, as depicted in the graphic below, the value of honeybees to the economy is significantly greater than 400 billion euros, the total averaging about two billion euros. With an extinction of bees would come an extinction of plants and crops, and then animals that relied on those crops, and animals that relied on those animals and so on (Holland, 2009). Soon enough, food webs would be toppled, many would starve, and the 6th Mass Extinction would occur. With the depletion of resources because of it, any organisms left on the planet would have to adapt because everyone that was left would be in a state of poverty. The damage that was caused would take centuries to recover and build from (Extinction: Causes and Consequences,

Wild plants and agricultural vegetations rest on on cross-fertilization for reproduction. Produce such as fruits and vegetables, both vital parts of the human diet, are all depend on bees and various insects to transmit from one flower to another. But when the environment is distributed by human activity and bees start to disappear, the cycle of life is basically broken, and this reduces the varieties of these pollinators, fruits and vegetables start to suffer and we as human start to feel the effects of bees disappearing from the environment.

In an ever-expanding world where resource scarcity is discussed in side conversations and overpopulation is being combatted by concerned nations, worldwide struggle of equal allocation of vital resources persist. Biological resources and biodiversity in general are at the forefront of these concerns. Decreasing biodiversity does not just pose a problem for the plants and animals that are becoming increasingly endangered; individuals who have constructed their livelihood around the availability of such resources face dire circumstances as scarcity arises. The greater the variety of abundant plant and animal species present in the world, the greater the potential opportunity, opportunities such as medical discoveries and newfound scientific knowledge that increase the sustainability of life on Earth. However, tragedy of the commons, has led to overuse of biological resources across the globe, throwing the issue of sustainability into question. While species extinction is a natural process in the world ecosystem, the rate at which it has increased is not. In the past 65 million years the rate of extinction has gone from one to five species per year to roughly 1,000 to 10,000 times that rate (Diversity, 2013, pg. 1). This is no longer a matter of natural selection; this is a matter of ineffective resource regulation worldwide.

Biodiversity loss is caused by local, global, and regional factors, so this problem should be brought to all of their attention. Responses designed to address biodiversity loss will not be sufficient unless relevant direct and indirect drivers of change are brought to attention. Some causes of biodiversity loss are localized, such as overexploitation. Others are global, such as climate change, while a lot operate at a different variety of scales, such as the local impacts of invasive species through global trade. Most of the responses named here were designed to address the direct causes of biodiversity loss. However, these causes are better seen as symptoms of the indirect causes, such as unsustainable patterns of consumption, demographic change, and globalization.

Over the past 10,000 years, humans have modified and altered the natural environment. From agriculture to industrialization, humans have changed the environment affecting the atmosphere and its surroundings. The growth in world population is masking a more important human-environmental interaction. While the world’s population is doubling, the world’s urban population is tripling. Within the next few years, more than half of the world will be living in urban areas (Torrey). It is now 2015 and a prediction made over a decade ago has become true. More than half of the world lives in urban areas. The world has shifted from becoming primarily rural and self-sustaining to urban and dependent. Humans pair progress with innovation meaning that if

The Ecosystem plays a huge role in animal, humans, and the environments life. An ecosystem includes living things such as plants, animals, and organisms in an area, interacting with each other and their non-living environments such as the weather, sun, soil, and climate. Ecosystems are the foundation of the Biosphere and it determines the health of the entire earth system. Since the Ecosystem plays such a big role on the Earth humans have found a way to help the ecosystem. Humans have also found ways to make the ecosystem worse. Things that people believe are minute are actually huge factors that either contribute to making the human impact on the ecosystem positive or negative. Little things like driving a car to work can weaken the ecosystem by the gas they are burning to fuel that vehicle is going into the air and causing pollution. Even big things like disposing of trash properly can really make a difference in the world. People fail to realize that everything they do finds a way to effect the people around them. Ultimately, humans really do play a big impact on the ecosystem both positively and negatively.

I will be talking about the anthropogenic effects of human activity on the environment as the part of society .Human impact on the environment or anthropogenic impact on the environment includes impacts on biophysical environments, biodiversity, and other resources. The term anthropogenic designates an effect or object resulting from human activity. The term was first used in the technical sense by Russian geologist Alexey Pavlov, and was first used in English by British ecologist Arthur Tansley in reference to human influences on climax plant communities.The atmospheric scientist Paul Crutzen introduced the term "Anthropocene" in the mid-1970s. The term is sometimes used in the context of pollution emissions that are produced as a result of human activities but applies broadly to all major human impacts on the environment . Understanding of the reciprocal relationships between social and environmental processes. Environmental geographers are concerned with how human beings use the earth and how humans impact the environments in which they live.

While human fertility does appear to be declining, world population is expected to reach ten times that of year 1800, with an expected 10 billion people by the late 21 century (Bongaarts 2009). An increase in human population and related natural resource depletion and environmental degradation are cause for global concern. There are a number of challenges to managing natural resources given the increases in human population today and into the future. The relationship between population growth and environmental degradation is apparent in the increasing energy demands, air and water pollution and loss of biodiversity. Additionally important is the necessity to maintain sustainable food crops for growing populations. Meeting the needs of a growing population has enormous bearing on how and where this resource retrieval will affect biodiversity and the sustainability of natural resources. Increasing global human population will have interchanging effects on ecosystem services; create difficulties in the ability to produce adequate levels of sustainable food through crop production and hunting; place increasing pressures on land for human habitation; create a greater potential for human-wildlife conflict; and most urgently, increase the potential for climate change effects as a result of human-induced activities that result in emissions of greenhouse gases.

In this day in age we often forget our effect on the environment. From driving cars to using paper, we forget that we have a large impact. Research has found that humans have easily used more than 30% of the worlds resources. With the increase in population, this number will increase rapidly. One organization that represents the effects humans have on the environment is World Wildlife Fund or WWF. This organization promotes ads and campaigns to help people see the big picture. It goes without saying that our effect on the environment is one of the most important issues facing us today.

Within a healthy ecosystem, animals, along with humans, receive essential benefits or ecosystem services. However, human activities can drive this balance in a negative direction. Although we appreciate these services given from an ecosystem, like the produce made from the flowers, an increase of human activities can impact the health of an ecosystem. We interfere with the balance of ecosystems when we release pesticides on our crops in hopes of protecting them from unwanted pests. The pesticides harm helpful insects like bees. When the there are no bees present to pollinate the flowers of fruits, it will be hard for fruits to grow. Not only will this hurt the production of fruit and our consumption, but it will also affect other organisms like birds that eat those fruits. The impacts of Human activities can be either a good or bad thing depending if regulations are in place to control our effects and reducing damages. Lack of conservation or management practices could result in people to believe deforestation, dumping, and waste does not have an impact to our planet. To reverse this belief that consumption and waste production is not a problem, we need to show people the incentives that come with being green. Many companies have sold their products this way to make us believe we are doing a good thing. By using our reason of belonging, we would need to come up with a way that involves enhancing ourselves while not hurting our income. From studies done, it can be seen that

Biodiversity is the variety of living organisms (Cho, 2011). Currently, an extreme loss of biodiversity is a problem that is being caused by human activities. A major report in 2005 stated that due to human actions, between 10% and 30% of mammal, bird, and amphibian species are threatened with extinction, since then, the problem has only increased (Shah, 2014).

The health of the earth degrades with the destructive activity of human beings. A recent study by a group of scientists looked at twenty four different services that the earth’s ecosystems provide for humans, ecosystem services, and found that fifteen of them are in need of desperate help (Gazette 31 March 2005). These services are vital to the survival of both human and nonhuman life and include filtering water and providing nutrient rich soils and ocean waters. Many of the members of these various ecosystems are also decreasing in numbers. In a British survey of bird populations found that in the 200 birds of Britain tracked there was about a 54% population decrease between the 1968-1971 tacking period and the 1988-1991 tacking period. In two other surveys of 254 native plant species from the same area there was a decrease of about 28% during the past 40 years. Humans are pushing the sixth mass extinction (Gazette March 19, 2004).

As inevitable as death and taxes, the population of the world will continue to grow until the government intervenes. The gross increase in population will generally lead to adverse effects on the environment. In the anthology, A Forest of Voices, an entry titled "Is It Too Late?" by Anthony Weston deals with the history of legislation for the protection of the environment and stories of it's destruction that are all too real. Seemingly, as the population increases, so should the level of intelligence for a sample population which would necessarily lead to a certain form of protection to the environment.