The Effect of Human Activities on the Local Ecosystems - Term Paper Example

I live in one of the most populated towns in my country.

Ours is not a very big house, though we have managed to find enough space for growing plants. They are on the balcony. That is the most suitable place for them to be grown because they get massive in-pour of sunlight and rain. I water the plants every day. Most of the plants are either fruit or vegetable plants. This is our way of promoting an organic lifestyle! There is a pomegranate tree, an apricot tree, and two apple trees. We have also planted garlic and tomatoes. There is a crowd of electrical wires on the street at the level of the street light. Normally, they remain covered with insulation tape, but a couple of times, crows have been electrified when they tried to sit over the wires while it was raining.

List of factors distinguishing between my local ecology and environment and those of the nearby towns: The factors are as follows: • Cultivation of vegetable and fruit trees • Intense electric wiring across the roof • Dense population • Houses made of stones and bricks • Occasional outbursts of heavy smoke generated by the burning of the rubbish heap • Frequent rainfall • Wild cats, dogs, and mice wandering around • Temperature is significantly lower than the nearby towns because my town is at a greater altitude.   The effect of human activities on the local ecosystems: The ecology and environment of my locality were considerably different two to three decades back than what it is now. “Human activity such as farming, building dams and clearing for development can also change the characteristics of land cover, which in turn affects how an ecosystem operates” (Hartman, 2010). Human activities have also caused a lot of changes in the local ecology and environment. Since my town is at an altitude, it used to be one of the greatest attractions for local and foreign travelers. That is why, one can still notice a lot of rest houses in my area. It is a hilly area. About twenty years ago, it used to be very green. There were pine trees everywhere. One could not locate one brown spot in the whole depth of the valley. Everything was green. There were very less houses. It was like a forest. “Close to 1.6 billion people – more than 25% of the world’s population – rely on forest resources for their livelihoods” (FAO, 2011). Likewise, the people of my town used to earn by entertaining the travelers with folk tales, local dance, selling fresh fruits and vegetables from the forest trees to them, and renting their houses. As more and more people started to dwell here, they cut the trees to make fire. Within a decade, trees were greatly reduced in number. Accordingly, tourists lost interest in coming here. This impacted the businesses of hundreds of local people. They became jobless and moved to the cities for jobs. The temperature of my region today is generally 5 to 6 degrees higher than what it used to be twenty years back. Today, we can not see any seagulls flying over the sky unlike in the past. Twenty years back, many people kept cattle and would eat their meat. But the gradual shift from this area to the city reduced the trend of keeping cattle and more people became pure vegetarians.    Comparison of the effect on my local ecosystem change with other areas: In comparison to other areas, my local area has suffered from a greater change in the ecosystem because it is a hilly area that has been the greatest tourist attraction for many years in the past. Today, one can hardly locate any tourists, and the climate, in general, has started to resemble that of the nearby towns. “The global temperature record is often used to support the claim that the Earth is warming” (Balling, 2003). My town is evidence of this. No other region I know has shown a 5 to 6 degree increase in the temperature over the last thirty years but my region has.  Read More