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What is biodiversity Biodiversity, from bio and diversity, is a term that has achieved widespread use among biologists, environmentalists, political leaders, and concerned citizens worldwide. It is generally used to equate to a concern for the natural environment and nature conservation. This use has coincided with the expansion of concern over flora and fauna species extinction observed in the last decades of the 20th century. How is biodiversity measured? Biodiversity is a broad concept, so a variety of objective measures have been created in order to empirically measure biodiversity. For practical conservationists, this measure should quantify a value that is broadly shared among locally affected people. For others, a more economically defensible definition should allow the ensuring of continued possibilities for both adaptation and future use by people, assuring environmental sustainability. Biodiversity is not distributed evenly on Earth. Flora and fauna vary depending on climate, altitude, soils and the presence of other species. Earth’s species are formally classified as rare, endangered, threatened or extinct species. Biodiversity is usually plotted as taxonomic richness of a geographic area, with some reference to a temporal scale. Alpha diversity refers to diversity within a particular area. Community or ecosystem, and is measured by counting the number of species within the ecosystem. Beta diversity is species diversity between ecosystems, and involves comparing the number of species that are unique to each of the ecosystems. Gamma diversity is a measure of the overall diversity for different ecosystems within a region. What are the benefits of biodiversity? Biodiversity has contributed in many ways to the development of human culture, and in turn, human communities have played a major role in shaping the diversity of nature at the species and ecological levels. Biodiversity is what underlies many important ecological goods and services that provide benefits to humans. There are three main reasons commonly cited in the literature for the benefits of biodiversity. Ecological role of biodiversity – Al species provide at least one function in an ecosystem. Each function is an integral part of regulating the species balance, species diversity and species health. All aspects which are intrinsic for the ecosystem as a whole to survive and prosper. Ecosystems also provide various infrastructure of production (e.g. soil fertility, pollinators of plants, predators, decomposers of waste) and services (e.g. purification of air and water, stabilization and moderation of climate). Research suggests that a more diverse ecosystem is better able to withstand environmental stress and is more productive. The loss of species thus is likely to decrease the ability of the system to maintain itself or to recover from damage or disturbance. Economic role of biodiversity – For all humans, biodiversity is a resource for daily life. Biodiversity is a reservoir of resources to be drawn upon for the manufacture of food, pharmaceutical and cosmetic products. Some of the important economic commodities that biodiversity supplies to humankind are food, medicine, industry, recreation and ecotourism. Scientific role of biodiversity – Biodiversity is important because each species can give us some clues as to how life evolved and will continue to evolve on Earth. Biodiversity also helps us understand how life functions and the role of each species in sustaining ecosystems.  With Florida is one of the most biologically diverse areas in the United States. This biodiversity includes species common to temperate North America and tropical West Indies. The number of temperate species progressively decreases, and the number of tropical species increases, moving from north to south along the Florida peninsula.  Bioassessment and Monitoring Program To attain the goal of preserving biodiversity of Rookery Bay National Estuarine Research Reserve (RBNERR) requires understanding and managing the flora and fauna in an ecosystem context. An ecosystem consists of organisms of various taxonomic designations, along with their interactions to each other and with abiotic conditions and processes. In recent years the Resource Management Department of RBNERR has been developing their Bioassessment and Monitoring Program. Data are systematically being collected on species occurrence and relative abundance among different habitat types. The primary goal of this program is to develop multi-species habitat-specific management strategies to support flora and fauna species conservation within the area managed by the Reserve. These strategies will be closely coordinated with the objectives of existing Federal and State species-specific recovery plans, the South Florida Ecosystem Restoration Initiative, and the South Florida Multi-Species Recovery Plan. Once formulated, these strategies will be recommended for incorporation into the Reserve’s Five-Year Management Plan. This framework will be used to prioritize and guide the Reserve’s prescribed burn program, exotic species control objectives, hydrological and habitat restoration activities, and land acquisition. |