How does land development destroy ecosystems?
1 Answer
Land development takes many different forms (making farms, mining, residential and commercial building development, etc) but it all involves an alteration of the ecosystem it occupies.
Explanation:
An ecosystem isn't so much a chart of what lives where but is instead a continuous series of interactions between different plants and animals.
Land development takes many different forms (making farms, mining, residential and commercial building development, etc) but it all involves an alteration of the ecosystem it occupies.
At its worst, land development destroys ecosystems - where all the plants are removed which eliminates all the animals dependent on the plants (the herbivores), which then removes the animals dependent on the plant-eaters (the carnivores).
Other times, land development changes the ecosystem so that it is unhealthy. For instance, I lived in an area that was constantly expanding its land usage and development and building more and more condo buildings. The result was that higher order predators, such as bear, were pushed out of the area and the ones that remained weren't interested in hunting small animals and eating berries - instead they wanted quick meals from leftover food in garbage cans. That caused the number of smaller animals to explode - skunks and racoons walked around without fear and their numbers exploded (and they too wanted quick meals from the garbage). And those changes changed other animals' and plants' habits and behaviours. In this case, the ecosystem changed and adapted.
Farms create an abundance of food for certain animals, causing them to eat very well (such as mice and some birds) and have population booms. These "rodents and pests" are then attacked with poisons to try to lower their population, which then causes further ripples in the ecosystem.
Even residential projects that limit the space predators can roam effects an ecosystem - predators that can no longer range across miles and search a certain place every few days for food will start to overuse the resources it can reach and will eventually lead to food shortage hardships.
