Quotes About Ecosystem

Trophic cascades, as defined by Diamond in his "Rosetta Stone" paper, are the secondary effects that can ramify from level to level in consequence of a single extinction.

We know that ecological isolation—either by seawater or by other sorts of delimitation—correlates strongly with risk of extinction

One of the signal lessons of Lyme disease, as Rick Ostfeld and his colleagues have shown, is that a zoonosis may spill over more readily within a disrupted, fragmented ecosystem than within an intact, diverse ecosystem.

Let's keep an eye on wild creatures. As we besiege them, as we corner them, as we exterminate them and eat them, we're getting their diseases.

Every time we exterminate a predator, we are in a sense creating a new predator.

The human brain now holds the key to our future. We have to recall the image of the planet from outer space: a single entity in which air, water, and continents are interconnected. That is our home.

If we call insects "pests," then we can make war on them. And we have done that, developing powerful chemicals that kill all insects to eliminate the ones that are troublesome to us. To me, using broad-spectrum pesticides is like dealing with high rates of crime in a town or neighbourhood by removing or killing everyone in the area.

That little walk powerfully reminded me that nature is our touchstone. However sophisticated and technologically advanced we may be, we are biological creatures, utterly dependent on her beneficence for clean air, water and food.

We know that deprivation of love can kill people. What are the effects of being deprived of a living environment?

Life thrives on life;

A fascinating index of the system's success is the spread of the turkey vulture, which had previously been confined to the southeastern states. The interstate highways functioned as a kind of moving buffet for them; as they followed the long lines of roadkill north and west over the next two decades, they came to inhabit every part of the country.

See that falcon? Hear those white-throated sparrows? Smell that skunk? Well, the falcon takes the sky, the white-throated sparrow takes the low bushes, the skunk takes the earth...I take the woods.

When the wolves are gone there will be too many caribou grazing the grass and the lemmings will starve. Without the lemmings the foxes and birds and weasels will die. Their passing will end smaller lives upon which even man depends, whether he knows it or not, and the top of the world will pass into silence.

for the same carbon is forever passing from atmosphere to plant, from plant to animal, and from animal to atmosphere, this last being the common storehouse

Sumac and mountain mahogany band together

In the United States, we do a pretty good job of protecting iconic landscapes and postcard views, but the ocean gets no respect.

Visualize any wooded area you remember visiting. It is beautiful, majestic - and no one ever fertilized any of the plants there. Not one single time.

nematode trapped by a single looped fungal strand, or hypha.

If you really want to be a good gardener, you need to understand what is going on in your soil.

It's not the jungle. It's the rainforest." "Same thing." "No, it's not.

Would that not be the final humbling of the human condition? That the trees and birds, the fox and the rabbit, the wolf and the deer... reach a point at which they do not even notice us, as we are transformed.

The dream of nature is a complex web of mutuality in which each part supports the other.

It's so much easier and cheaper to keep the river uncontaminated in the first place than it is to clean it up again once it's been polluted.

The beauty and variety of the natural world are merely the visible legacies of endless war.