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Mountains cover approximately 25 percent of earth's surface and provide a home to more than one-tenth of global human population. Changes in global climate pose a number of potential risks to mountain habitats. [13] Climate change can adversely affect both alpine tundra and montane grasslands and shrublands.
A great portion of the world's deserts are within the subtropics, as this is where the semi-permanent subtropical anticyclone resides (typically inland on the southwest sides of continents). Areas bordering warm oceans (typically on the southeast sides of continents) have hot and wet summers with frequent (but brief) convective rainfall ...
The resilience of human food systems and their capacity to adapt to future change is linked to biodiversity – including dryland-adapted shrub and tree species that help combat desertification, forest-dwelling insects, bats and bird species that pollinate crops, trees with extensive root systems in mountain ecosystems that prevent soil erosion ...
The more trees that are removed equals larger effects of climate change which, in turn, results in the loss of more trees. [13] Forests cover 31% of the land area on Earth. Every year, 75,700 square kilometers (18.7 million acres) of the forest is lost. [14] There was a 12% increase in the loss of primary tropical forests from 2019 to 2020. [15]
A satellite image of the Sahara, the world's largest hot desert and third largest desert after Antarctica and the Arctic. Desert greening is the process of afforestation or revegetation of deserts for ecological restoration (biodiversity), sustainable farming and forestry, but also for reclamation of natural water systems and other ecological systems that support life.
Human impact on the environment. From top left, clockwise: satellite image of Southeast Asian haze; IAEA experts investigate the Fukushima disaster; a seabird during an oil spill; depiction of deforestation of Brazil's Atlantic forest by Portuguese settlers, c. 1820 –25; acid mine drainage in the Rio Tinto; industrial fishing in 1997, a practice that has led to overfishing.
Around 30% of Earth's land area is largely unusable for humans (glaciers, deserts, etc.), 26% is forests, 10% is shrubland and 34% is agricultural land. [125] Deforestation is the main land use change contributor to global warming, [126] as the destroyed trees release CO 2, and are not replaced by new trees, removing that carbon sink. [127]
Desert ecology is the study of interactions between both biotic and abiotic components of desert environments. A desert ecosystem is defined by interactions between organisms, the climate in which they live, and any other non-living influences on the habitat. Deserts are arid regions that are generally associated with warm temperatures; however ...