Ecosystems

In plain terms, an ecosystem is the combined diverse things or elements that sustain the life of a living biological group or species (biodiversity) within a particular environment or habitat. Living things, like plants, birds, fishes, animals, insects, human beings and other organisms may live in the same community or environment but they all depend on mostly different support systems in that same community to survive. Some features of the different support systems may intersect, like air, water, and food like fruits, but by and large each group or species live separately within and depend generally on their own ecosystems to survive. For example, although living in the same community or environment, a bird would not survive in the insects’ ecosystem, the fishes would not survive in the animals’ ecosystem, and so on.

Ecosystems are affected by climate change, according to the US’s Environmental Protection agency, epa.gov, “climate controls how plants grow, how animals behave, which organisms thrive” and also, “as habitats experience different temperatures, precipitation patterns, and other changes, the organisms that make up ecosystems feel the effects”.

There can be no biodiversity, (multiple living things or species), without the necessary ecosystems to facilitate their different and separate habitats that are required, and climate change impacts on ecosystems by way of heatwaves, floods, and wildfires, for example, create , by extension, a direct danger to biodiversity itself.