What is Biodiversity and Why Is It Important?

Biodiversity: What it is... and why we should care

Biodiversity describes the variety of living organisms on Earth, their genetic makeup within and between populations, and the intricate web of interactions between them that sustains life across ecosystems, regions, landscapes, and oceans.

-Adapted from the National Research Council (US) Committee on Noneconomic and Economic Value of Biodiversity and the World Wildlife Fund's definitions of Biodiversity - intermingled with my own understanding. 

So, why does it matter? 

Biodiversity is vitally important. It's key to the proper functioning of an ecosystem. Each species has a role to play - a niche to fill. When we lose those characters, we lose their contribution to the system, and that leaves an open space for non-native, and often times invasive species, to fill. When this happens it can throw off the balance of the entire ecosystem and the intricate ways in which the plants, animals, fungi, and bacteria interact to maintain homeostasis is disrupted. That can result in the loss of ecosystem services like food production (think the loss of bees and what that does to fruit and vegetable production), water purification, nutrient cycling, and other equally important outcomes of a well-balanced ecosystem. When the diversity disappears it removes the important symbiotic relationships that fuel our planet. 

We also need biodiversity to control populations through predation, competition, disease regulation, and gene flow. Biodiversity is key to transferring genetic material between populations (gene flow). This exchange is key to evolution and the ability of species to adapt to a changing climate - something we should be very concerned with considering the current climate trajectory. 

Locally, we should be concerned with biodiversity because it's how we get our ecosystem services - recreation, clean water, fertile soils, and food, among other things. A lack of biodiversity can cause economic and health losses that can be detrimental to disadvantaged or poverty stricken communities, and these communities are already at the highest risk for climate related disasters. 

Regionally, biodiversity is important as it plays a role in the interactions between a multitude of ecosystems at the landscape-scale, and nationally, we should strive to maintain the biodiversity that made this country a mecca for prosperity for the settlers that immigrated here - and the Native Americans that contributed to maintaining the natural balance within their homelands long before that (the original stewards). The ramifications of the loss of biodiversity should also be apparent at the global level - because we are in a climate crisis, and it's being felt at different intensities across the planet. In order to prevent global climate disaster, nations need to work together to protect biodiversity in their homelands as well as in the oceans we share; so that we have the best chance of adapting to climate change.