Results of Human Activity
Habitat fragmentation leads to a cascade of alterations of the original forest landscape. For example, the extent of human disturbances, including habitat destruction, in the Atlantic Forest has led to an extinction crisis. The endemic species in this region are especially vulnerable to extinction due to fragmentation because of their small geographic rages and low occurrence. In a study of the Atlantic Forest fragments, community level biomass was reduced to 60% in plots less than 25 hectares. Key ecological processes such as seed dispersal, gene flow, colonization and other processes are disturbed by fragmentation. With many key vertebrate seed dispersers going extinct, it is predicted that many regional, fruit-bearing tree species in the Atlantic forest will become extinct due to failure of seedling recruitment and recolonisation. With all these species already threatened, it is predicted that with the persistence of current deforestation rates the Atlantic forest will see continued extinction of species.
Read more about this topic: Atlantic Forest
Famous quotes containing the words results of, results, human and/or activity:
“Consider what you have in the smallest chosen library. A company of the wisest and wittiest men that could be picked out of all civil countries in a thousand years have set in best order the results of their learning and wisdom. The men themselves were hid and inaccessible, solitary, impatient of interruption, fenced by etiquette; but the thought which they did not uncover in their bosom friend is here written out in transparent words to us, the strangers of another age.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“It amazes me when I hear any person prefer blindness to deafness. Such a person must have a terrible dread of being alone. Blindness makes one totally dependent on others, and deprives us of every satisfaction that results from light.”
—Horace Walpole (1717–1797)
“You can make the best of it and be content, or you can complain, it makes no difference. What does it matter that human beings judge the things that exist?”
—Franz Grillparzer (1791–1872)
“You must learn to be still in the midst of activity and to be vibrantly alive in repose.”
—Indira Gandhi (1917–1984)