The Root of our Ecological Crisis

A general ecological crisis happens when an environment is unable to evolve in such a way that it either fails to adapt or if there is a certain unfavorable aspect that interferes with that particular ecosystem's survival.

Other factors that may be affected could be the landscape in the ecosystem or the even the species which live in the environment. It could be that the environment has started to degrade compared to the species needs after an abiotic change in an ecological factor such as lesser rainfall or an increase in temperature.

It could be that the environment has already become hostile for the survival of the species and its population because of a change in one of the elements. One of these so-called elements could be an increase in predation in the environment such as overfishing. It could be that the quality of life of the species or even the population because of the sudden escalation of the population in individuals.

Ecological crises may differ in their severity or duration. It may occur as long as a few million years or as short as a few months. The origins of these ecological crises may be related to a specific species or maybe a greater level such as what happened during the extinction event. The more typical ecological crisis that most people associate with are the oil spills that happen occasionally or maybe even global warming. These are some of the examples of crises that an environment would normally face.

For an environment, a local crisis will incur more or less significant consequences according to the degree of severity and the extent of the damage done to it. Whatever the origin of the endemic cause, there will often be a breach in the food chain which will further affect the survival of the other species.

If what is being talked about is a case of global crisis, the consequences will be even much more substantial. There are extinction events which have shown that over 90% of the existing species at that time were wiped out.

However, if we take into consideration the dinosaurs which became extinct at that time, the freeing of their ecological niche was able to free up the diversification of the mammals in the long run. This is one of the rare cases that paradoxically, an ecological crisis eventually favored the multiplication and evolution of the species.