#ecosystem

Humans have changed ecosystems more rapidly and extensively than in any comparable period of time in human history, largely to meet rapidly growing demands for food, fresh water, timber, fiber and fuel. This has resulted in a substantial and largely irreversible loss in the diversity of life on Earth. ↗

— Gary Larson

#changed #comparable #demands #diversity #earth

Putting our ecosystem in great peril is certainly not a part of Chinese culture that I know. ↗

— Yao Ming

#chinese #chinese culture #culture #ecosystem #great

The Everglades was the only place on earth where alligators (broad snout, fresh water, darker skin) and crocodiles (pointy snout, salt water, toothy grin) lived side by side. It was the only home of the Everglades mink, Okeechobee gourd, and Big Cypress fox squirrel. It had carnivorous plants, amphibious birds, oysters that grew on trees, cacti that grew in water, lizards that changed colors, and fish that changed genders. It had 1,100 species of trees and plants, 350 birds, and 52 varieties of porcelain-smooth, candy-striped tree snails. It had bottlenose dolphins, marsh rabbits, ghost orchids, moray eels, bald eagles, and countless other species that didn't seem to belong on the same continent, much less in the same ecosystem. ↗

— Michael Grunwald

#ecosystems #environment #everglades #change

But as the Everglades continued to wither, a few of their colleagues began to wonder if conservation really should mean development more than preservation. These heretics did not believe that God had created man in order to 'improve' or 'redeem' nature; they found God's grace in nature itself. ↗

— Michael Grunwald

#ecology #ecosystems #everglades #preservation #nature

That's it on the maps; nature doesn't acknowledge frontiers. Neither can ecology... Where to begin to understand what we've only got a computerspeak label for, ecosystem? Where to decide it begins. ↗

— Nadine Gordimer

#ecology #ecosystem #nature

The ecosystem of our world is a closed system: it would run out of gas, collapse of its own weight. ↗

— Joan D. Vinge

#closed system #collapse #ecosystem #gas #our

While it is relatively easy to recognize the perennial grasses and seed-eating sparrows as characteristic of meadows, the ecosystems exist in their fullest sense underground. What we see aboveground is only the outer margin of an ecosystem that explodes in intricacy and life below. ↗

— Amy Seidl

#meadows #soil #life