Quotes About Ecosystem

There are three types of biomimicry - one is copying form and shape, another is copying a process, like photosynthesis in a leaf, and the third is mimicking at an ecosystem's level, like building a nature-inspired city.

When we look at transportation in America, there's going to be companies like Magic Bus, where you have these private bus fleets. You're going to have carpooling; you're going to have these different types of transportation. It's going to be a full ecosystem, but it's not going to be a winner-takes-all.

Forty percent of the United States drains into the Mississippi. It's agriculture. It's golf courses. It's domestic runoff from our lawns and roads. Ultimately, where does it go? Downstream into the gulf.

We don't think much about climate change and rising sea levels here in the U.S. Beyond a few gardeners, birders and hikers who notice the changes in our own ecosystem, we live on, blissfully unaware of our changing Earth. Our storms - Katrina, Sandy - are dismissed as once-in-a-century events.

Bacteria live in unbelievable mixtures of hundreds or thousands of species. Like on your teeth. There are 600 species of bacteria on your teeth every morning.

What we once used as weapons of war, we now use as weapons against fish.

Can there be any question that the human is the least harmonious beast in the forest and the creature most toxic to the nest?

Wisdom is the intelligence of the system as a whole.

Most animals on this planet live in the ocean. And most of them are invertebrates.

To succeed as a predator, simple math explains that it is vital that the consumers do not outnumber the consumees. The older and larger the consumer, the greater the investment of energy, pound for pound. It takes a lot of seeds and grass to make enough mice and rabbits to make a wolf; a lot of little plants to make sufficient numbers of small fish to make a shark. As it turns out, it takes a lot of everything to power human societies.

Even if you never have the chance to see or touch the ocean, the ocean touches you with every breath you take, every drop of water you drink, every bite you consume. Everyone, everywhere is inextricably connected to and utterly dependent upon the existence of the sea.

The bottom line answer to the question about why biodiversity matters is fairly simple: The rest of the living world can get along without us, but we can't get along without them.

Even if you never have the chance to see or touch the ocean, the ocean touches you with every breath you take, every drop of water you drink, every bite you consume. Everyone, everywhere is inextricably connected to and utterly dependent upon the existence of the sea. Early

Let's talk trash…. Only we humans make waste that nature can't digest.

Even smaller pieces are engulfed by inch-long krill; ant-size copepods; and filter-feeding salps, clams, oysters, and mussels. Large plankton feeders such as whale sharks and manta rays swallow gallons of water at a time, plastic and all. Whether at the large, medium, small, or ultra-small scale, ingested plastic lumps, clumps, pellets, or microscopic mites kill by physically obstructing, choking, clogging, or otherwise stopping up the passage of food.

One kind of blue-green bacteria, Prochlorococcus, is so abundant—about 100 octillion (1 octillion = 1027) are alive at any given moment—that it alone is responsible for about 20 percent of the oxygen in the atmosphere. Put another way, this nearly invisible form of life generates the oxygen in one of every five breaths you take, no matter where on the planet you live.

A report from the National Academy of Sciences published five years later reported that over 6 billion kilograms (14 billion pounds) of garbage were deliberately dumped into the sea every year.

But there's another, much darker, way in which Sylvia Earle helps us understand the size of the ocean. And that's to point out that, vast as it is, it's not so big that we can't screw it up.

I hope for your help to explore and protect the wild ocean in ways that will restore the health and, in so doing, secure hope for humankind. Health to the ocean means health for us.

Far and away the biggest threat to the ocean is ignorance. It's a lack of understanding that what we put in, what we take out matters—not just to the ocean, but matters to us. The ocean cannot be regarded as the planet's ultimate dumpster or the ultimate place to get free food.

Everything is connected to everything else.

Give a man a fish, and he'll eat for a day. Give a fish a man, and he'll eat for weeks!

When we see our lives as only a small part of a greater web, our perspective changes dramatically.

Forests, hills, mountains, rivers, and green streams had no protection in the face of rapacity.