Ecosystems are natural units consisting of abiotic and biotic components. There are hundreds of ecosystems on the planet, including marine, taiga, grasslands, and underground ecosystems. Rainforests are the most important terrestrial ecosystem, but they are also disappearing rapidly due to logging.
An ecosystem is a natural unit consisting of the abiotic (non-living) portion of an environment that interacts with the biotic (living) plants and animals that have adapted to it. There are hundreds of ecosystems on the planet, divided into primary categories (eg desert) and numerous subcategories (eg Western Australian desert). The main ecosystems on the planet are marine ecosystems, including the photic zone (within 200 m of the surface) and the abyssal plain (the ocean floors). The concept of ecosystem is very similar to that of biome.
The major ecosystems on the planet besides aquatic ecosystems are the taiga (Canadian and Siberian coniferous forests), grasslands (covering most of Asia and North America), and the deep underground ecosystem, which extends for 2- 4 miles below the surface of the Earth and is populated mainly by bacteria. The latter is also known as the Subsurface lithoautotrophic microbial ecosystem and is one of the least studied ecosystems on Earth, despite being one of the largest. Much of the planet can also be considered a human-influenced ecosystem, as humans are so numerous and intervene in nature so frequently that few regions are intact.
Ecosystems are often defined in terms of primary producers (vegetation), which serve as the basis of the ecosystem and on which everything else feeds, either directly (consumers) or indirectly (predators). In order of approximate proximity to the equator, some important vegetation-defined ecosystems are tropical rainforest, subtropical rainforest, coniferous forest, grasslands, taiga, and tundra. These are mixed with mountain and desert ecosystems, each with its own unique flora and fauna. There are also a number of important human ecosystems, such as farmlands and cities.
The most important terrestrial ecosystem is the rainforest: rainforests contain more than half of all biodiversity, perhaps as much as 80%. Unfortunately, rainforests are also one of the fastest disappearing ecosystems, destroyed by logging for agriculture. Unless this logging is aggressively halted, rainforests could disappear by 2100 or sooner.
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