Abiotic factors, such as temperature, airflow, and soil components, influence the viability of ecosystems. Human activity can alter natural abiotic factors, leading to changes in the ecosystem. Deforestation of the Amazon rainforest is causing abiotic factors to unravel, leading to droughts, fires, and the release of greenhouse gases.
Abiotic factors are elements of a living ecosystem that influence the viability of the system to grow or survive, but which in themselves are not biological in nature. These environmental factors include common conditions such as temperature, airflow, available light, and inorganic soil components. Broader abiotic factors that can affect organisms also include land elevation, changes in climate, and the level of rainfall a region receives over the course of growing seasons.
Nonliving factors shape environments and the mix of organisms living within them to just as great an extent as biological factors such as predator-prey relationships themselves. A climate with long, harsh winters, for example, such as a tundra region, will limit the growth of most plants except mosses and heaths which are hardy in cold environments where the ground is frozen most of the year. Animal species are also limited in such an environment to those that can develop thick insulating coats and live in low direct light or where food sources are scarce, such as polar bears, arctic hares or reindeer.
Chemical factors in soil, atmosphere, and ecosystem water supplies are often driven by abiotic factors that occur over geological time scales. These can include elements that affect the composition of the earth such as volcanic activity and wind and water currents that are channeled by lunar tidal cycles. Temperature ranges within a climate are also affected by land elevation, as well as how the terrain affects rainfall patterns and the air pressure systems that pass through it.
The effects of living organisms on an environment are often intertwined with abiotic factors to such an extent that when one is drastically changed, the other changes as well. Human activity in an environment can also alter natural abiotic factors such as rainfall patterns which, over time, can modify the local ecosystem and the organisms able to survive in it. The best example of this in history is the deforestation process.
Extensive tropical or temperate forests, such as once existed in the Fertile Crescent along a large region of the east coast bordering the Mediterranean Sea, have maintained rainfall patterns that have kept the ecosystem lush and ecologically diverse for many of Earth’s earliest civilizations. The intense deforestation of the Fertile Crescent region by various societies from the Sumerians in 2,000 BC to the time of the Roman Empire reduced the forest cover to 10% of previous levels, resulting in salinization of water and soil and precipitation greatly reduced annuals changed the climate to a hot, desert region where few plants or animals could thrive.
A similar pattern is occurring in contemporary times with the rapid deforestation of the Amazon River Basin in South America. An estimated 20% of the Amazon rainforest has already been cleared as of 2011, and another 20% will disappear within the next two decades. At this point, environmental scientists believe the forest will reach an inflection point, where abiotic factors will begin to unravel its natural ecosystems. This is partly because the forest produces half of its rain from the moisture it releases into the air, and this drying out of the region will lead to an increase in other abiotic factors, such as the spread of fires, droughts, and the release of greenhouse gases as the forest dies, contributing to global warming and further perpetuating abiotic influences.
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