What are examples of environmental problems happening in different biomes?
1 Answer
See below.
Explanation:
There are some environmental problems that affect almost all biomes, such as land use change. Tropical rain forests, desert biomes, savannah grasslands are all being converted to agriculture, human settlements, and used for natural resource extraction. Many biomes are increasingly threatened by invasive species, which outcompete native species and can seriously damage the ecosystem.
Examples that are more specific (but not exclusive) to particular biomes include warming temperatures in the tundra, desertification in savannas, and loss of boreal forest due to forest fires. These are further explained below.
Throughout the tundra biome, there is a decline in snow and ice. Warming temperatures have caused a loss of permafrost. These changes are happening quickly and many species adapted to the tundra climate, both plants and animals, are not adapting fast enough. The image below shows predicted loss of permafrost in Alaska. Read more about this problem here.
The Sahel region is an example of one location where the savanna biome is at risk of desertification This is mainly due to human actions such as farming and grazing. As the amount of vegetation declines, soil erosion increases, and the plants that would typically grow in this area are no longer able to survive in the dusty soil. Thus, the savanna in the Sahel is losing ground (see here and here).
The boreal forests are experiencing a lot of changes currently due to climate change. Rapidly increasing temperatures are moving too quickly for forests to keep up, thus we see an increase in forest fires and insect outbreaks that damage boreal forests (read more here). The image below shows forest loss in pink and forest gain in purple from 2001-2014 from Global Forest Watch.
