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A food web is the natural interconnection of food chains and a graphical representation of what-eats-what in an ecological community. Position in the food web, or trophic level, is used in ecology to broadly classify organisms as autotrophs or heterotrophs.
The Aral Sea is an example of a collapsed ecosystem. [1] (image source: NASA) An ecosystem, short for ecological system, is defined as a collection of interacting organisms within a biophysical environment. [2]: 458 Ecosystems are never static, and are continually subject to both stabilizing and destabilizing processes. [3]
A disaster is an event that causes serious harm to people, buildings, economies, or the environment, and the affected community cannot handle it alone. [ 1 ] [ 2 ] [ better source needed ] Natural disasters like avalanches , floods , earthquakes , and wildfires are caused by natural hazards . [ 3 ]
For example, windstorms followed by fire can create fire temperatures and durations that are not expected in even severe wildfires, and may have surprising effects on post-fire succession. [18] Environmental stresses can be described as pressure on the environment, with compounding variables such as extreme temperature or precipitation changes ...
An example of a topological food web (image courtesy of USDA) [1]. The soil food web is the community of organisms living all or part of their lives in the soil. It describes a complex living system in the soil and how it interacts with the environment, plants, and animals.
This can result in the reduction of genetic diversity and perhaps the production of infertile youths, as these organisms would have a higher possibility of mating with related organisms within their population, or different species. One of the most famous examples is the impact upon China's giant panda, once found in many areas of Sichuan.
An environmental disaster or ecological disaster is defined as a catastrophic event regarding the natural environment that is due to human activity. [2] This point distinguishes environmental disasters from other disturbances such as natural disasters and intentional acts of war such as nuclear bombings .
Examples of animal overpopulation caused by introduction of a foreign species abound. In the Argentine Patagonia , for example, European species such as the trout and the deer were introduced into the local streams and forests, respectively, and quickly became a plague, competing with and sometimes driving away the local species of fish and ...