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Island ecology is the study of island organisms and their interactions with each other and the environment. Islands account for nearly 1/6 of earth’s total land area, [1] yet the ecology of island ecosystems is vastly different from that of mainland communities.
Island species dynamics give information about how species move and interact within Island Like Systems (ILS). Rather than an actual island, ILS are primarily defined by their isolation within an ecosystem. In the case of an island, the area referred to as the matrix is usually the body of water surrounding it.
Easter Island, the easternmost island in Polynesia, shows evidence of ecosystem collapse, probably caused by human activity, several hundred years ago, which contributed (along with slave raiding and European diseases) to a 99% decline in the human population of the island. The island, once lushly forested, is now mostly windswept grassland.
Topographic map of Iceland. The wildlife of Iceland is the wild plant and animal life found on the island of Iceland, located in the north Atlantic Ocean just south of the Arctic Circle. The flora, fauna, and funga is limited by the geography and climate of the island. The habitats on the island include high mountains, lava fields, tundras ...
Since islands are less complex and more numerous than larger ecosystems, islands provide better opportunities to develop insights and perform replicable field research. Given that insular microcosms are common to all ecosystems, principles from island biogeography can be applied generally.
Macquarie Island is a subantarctic island in the south-western Pacific Ocean, about halfway between New Zealand and Antarctica. [1] It has been governed as a part of Tasmania , Australia since 1880. It became a Tasmanian State Reserve in 1978 and was inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1997.
The ecosystem of Pacific temperate rainforests is so productive that the biomass on the best sites is at least four times greater than that of any comparable area in the tropics. [1] In sheer mass of living and decaying material - trees, mosses, shrubs, and soil - these forests are more massive than any other ecosystem on the planet.
The following is a list of marine ecoregions, as defined by the WWF and The Nature Conservancy. The WWF/Nature Conservancy scheme groups the individual ecoregions into 12 marine realms, which represent the broad latitudinal divisions of polar, temperate, and tropical seas, with subdivisions based on ocean basins.