Human Impacts of Ecosystems

Introduction

Pollution is anything that makes the earth dirty and unhealthy. Such things may include air, water and land, these are all affected by pollution. Humans have contributed to pollution and still are every single day whether that’s by dropping a piece of rubbish or buying a single use cup there are many ways humans contribute to pollution. In a few years’ time our damage humans have done to the earth by polluting will be un fixable, many people are wanting to fix this issue for future generations.

There are many ways that humans are helping this issue such as donating clothes to a local op-shop instead of it going to landfill or using a reusable cup. As long as humans live on the earth there will pollution but that doesn’t mean that people can’t try and decrease it now.

How Humans Affect the Oceans Natural Ecosystem

The ocean is a natural ecosystem that covers more the 70 percent of the earths surface.

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Humans rely on the ocean for many things like food and for entertainment. This means that many things humans do on an everyday basis creates an imbalance in the ocean. Some examples of human pollution that affect our ocean include large scale ocean spills. Large scale ocean spills are also a type of human pollution, that is caused by ships that release oil into our oceans. Oils in our ocean last years and are extremely toxic to all marine life. Littering is one of the main causes of ocean pollution.

This occurs when objects typically soft plastics like shopping bags are left on the ground, this causes the rubbish to start a journey that will almost always end up in the ocean. Rubbish in the ocean can kill marine life because many animals mistake it for food just like in this photo where a turtle was found with all different types of plastic in its stomach due to human pollution. There also many more causes such as over fishing.

How has Human Pollution Affected Biotic and Abiotic Factors

Human pollution affects biotic factors by killing animals whether that’s due to rubbish in the ocean, oil spills or another type of human pollution. Humans also impact Abiotic factors such as sunlight and nutrient availability due to oil spills. When oil spills occur in the ocean the oil sits at the top of the oceans water, this affects the sunlight reaching the marine plants which disrupts the process of photosynthesis and causes many marine plants to die which means there’s less food for marine animals to eat, the image on the right is an example of an oil spill caused by a ship. Temperature is also an abiotic factor that is affected by humans due to global warming that is caused by human pollution as well as other factors. Global warming will affect the oceans temperature by increasing it, this will cause many marine animals to die which results in an imbalance in the food chain. Global warming also causes sea levels to rise.

What is Being Done and How Can You Help

Many people are spreading awareness and protesting against human pollution that affects our ocean. Social media is a great way of getting the message across and is influencing people to help fix this issue. The image on the left is an example of a human protesting against this issue in Australia. We are hoping that all together we can combat this matter before it becomes unfixable. There are many things we can all do to help this issue. One thing we should all do is change over to reusable products such as water bottles, grocery shopping bags and much more instead of using single use plastics. Remembering to recycle properly and not to litter. We are slowly spreading the word across that human pollution has to stop, all together we can combat this issue a lot faster and make the ocean cleaner for future generations.

In conclusion, human pollution is a massive issue but together we can slowly combat this issue. Each year 8 million tons of plastic is dumped into our oceans, because of this humans are now switching to reusable items instead of one-use items. The longer people wait to try to fix human pollution the worse it gets. Using reusable items might not seem like a big change but if everyone does it, it will help our ocean and our overall environment. Despite this example there are also many other ways to help combat this issue.