Environmental Education - Ecosystems
The world consists of millions of different ecosystems. An ecosystem can be anything from the life under a small stone in your garden to the huge Amazon Rainforest in Latin America. All the living animals, plants and organisms in an ecosystem are dependent on each other. They are also dependent on the natural resources within the ecosystem such as the water, air and the soil. If any part of this complex system is disturbed it might lead to a disturbance in the whole ecosystem and even worse the disturbance might spread to surrounding ecosystems. This can cause wide spread degradation all because of a small change.
Some ecosystems are more diverse than others. The artic tundra is much more sparse than the bio-diversely rich coral reefs under the sea, but this doesn’t mean that it is any less important. The world is a very complex system and it needs a variety to be preserved the way we know it.
The Earth Restoration Service has divided our planets nature into six main groups: desert, forest, freshwater, grassland, marine and tundra. Within each group there can be thousands of different ecosystems. We have listed the most common ecosystems within each group. Click on the symbols above to learn more about the great diversity of our world!
