how do human activities in mordern world cause ecological imbalance in natural environment
Answers
Answer:
Any time humans pollute the air, soil or water we create an imbalance. A polluted soil cannot sustain the soil living organisms and so the imbalance is created. Same with polluted with water and air.
You could also take this a stage further. A new road, and indeed many older roads which cut through a forest will cause an imbalance. Species may not wish to cross the road so an imbalance has been created. There are lots of examples, villages may be small enough to not disrupt the local wildlife, but towns and cities will remove a natural habitat and replace it with an artificial one.
Some cities with lots of green space, once mature, as in the case of many parts of Johannesburg are recording woodland bird species moving into the city. This is because the landscape is now mature enough to support the bird species and is reverting to a healthy environment. But that will only work is native species of plants are planted as wildlife can only utilise species of plants that it was designed to co-habit with in the environment.
Explanation:
We’re trying to replace a 2.6 million year old ice cap that left our water cycle very dry. It was acting as a natural aquifer and causing lower snow lines on peaks, meaning far greater seasonal runoff and deeper, moist lowlands. Water levels were 400 ft. lower, there were a lot more plants and animals (they were colossal in size, indicating very plentiful food; and interdependent, hence collapsing together), Indonesia was a solid continent, and the Persian Gulf was a dry continental drainage basin (hence the Eden story at the would-be Tigris and Euphrates Delta, and the aeons of oil and natural gas there (that’s where virtually all Middle Eastern oil comes from, which is ironic, given that the nomads of the area cited that sunken area as the origin of mankind and paradise)).
From an ecological point of view the number of species (of all species, bacteria, plants, insects etc) and the number of layers (so the number of different beings that the food passes through, to make a full cycle) define the value of a system. A more complex system is more valuable and will be more balanced.
Early humanity, small groups of hunters and food gatherers lived in harmony with their surroundings. Some large animals can also form big herds. I figure man also. In some occasions this may be perfectly alright, but when culture appears and man forms lasting herds it can cause ecological damage.
A good example is the Easter Island. It seems the people used wood to transport the big stones that they curved, and this stone carving culture brought itself to a stop by cutting all trees.
Another example seems to be the Mayan culture in Yugotan. They builded towns, temples, cultivated the earth, but by doing so they chopped down the woods and eventually their economy was not sustainable.
Nowadays a lot of chemicals are added to the process of cultivating the soil. Also big machinery is employed. Artificial fertilizers are added, notably Nitrogen, and all kind of poisons to kill ‘harmful’ insects are used to improve the crops. Modern agriculture uses monocultures, so just one plant is supposed to grow in a large field. Ecological speaking these fields with only potatoes, mais, wheat, etcetera, are deserts. Just very view species live there. Also when you look at the soil you do not find the wealth of life (bacteria, insects etcetera) that you see in nature.
Insects are diminishing rapidly the last years. This affects also bird life as lots of birds feed on insects. One could think it is not that bad as most insects disappear, this is why we use chemicals in the first place, to kill the insects to protect the crops. But not all insects are harmful, actually most are beneficial, also to man. How about the flowers and the bees?
Besides, if an ecological system is complex and contains many, many different species, it is more robust and it can handle unexpected changes better. E g. changes in the weather. A simple ecological system can collapse under pressure, more creatures can become extinct then, and for instance just harmful insects may survive and the predator insects, who kill the harmfull insects may become extinct.
First the ecological system is exhausted and next it detoriates to a more simple system. A good example is the ‘dust bowl' in middle USA. Read for instance ‘the grapes of wrath'. The best solution to improve the ecology worldwide would be to decimate the human population, as we humans pose the biggest threat.