Ecosystem Change Quotes

Humans have changed ecosystems more rapidly and extensively than in any comparable period of time in human history, largely to meet rapidly growing demands for food, fresh water, timber, fiber and fuel. This has resulted in a substantial and largely irreversible loss in the diversity of life on Earth.

When I first ventured into the Gulf of Mexico in the 1950s, the sea appeared to be a blue infinity too large, too wild to be harmed by anything that people could do.

The water bodies are reducing everywhere in the Rift Valley. It's not because the water has been used. It's because the rivers flowing to the lakes are reducing because of climate change.

Nile perch is a fish that was introduced into Lake Victoria. The reason that fish was introduced into Lake Victoria was because it was decided that the people living near the lake needed more proteins than they were getting.

99.99 percent of all species that have ever lived are no longer with us.

There are definitely recurring themes in humanity's relationship with our environment. The biggest is probably adaptation, because humans are incredibly good at adapting to new environments in relatively short periods of time. The ancestors of Homo sapiens started leaving Africa over one million years ago, moving from warm, tropical climates into the freezing wilderness of Europe and the desert ecosystems of the Middle East.

Life does more than adapt to the Earth. It changes the Earth to its own purposes.

People need to realize how powerful the transformation of soil can be.

Injecting CO2 into an underground reservoir would certainly change the local environment and thus affect the organisms that live there. Some will thrive, and others will suffer. While we should minimize such impacts, they cannot be avoided completely. The same happens when one plows a field, builds a house or a road, or waters a lawn.

Our climate is always changing.

Parrots have gone a bit quiet since pirates have gone.

...think of agriculture as something the grasses did to people to conquer the trees.

I see less difference between a city and a swamp than formerly.

If our grazing land was allowed to revert to natural ecosystems, and the land currently used to grow feed for livestock was used for grains, beans, fruit, nuts and vegetables for humans, this switch would allow the UK to absorb an astonishing quantity of carbon.

We live in a society right now which is the last phase of the ecosystem in terms of the old entertainment value, or the old entertainment construction, which is we've gone down to this instant gratification, instant numbers, instant understanding, instant. But it's like the exact - it has perfected itself to the instant click, when, in a way, creativity originates as a much more complex beast. So we now have to reinvent a new canvas where we can indulge in it. And that's where the digital revolution creates a whole new ecosystem of entertainment.

Scientists use satellites to track weather, map ice sheet melting, detect diseases, show ecosystem change... the list goes on and on. I think nearly every scientific field benefits or could benefit from satellite imagery analysis.

You know the way trees break through the canopy in the rainforest and they go from having this tiny column of light to having all this light - the Internet is kind of like that.

I enjoyed school until the age of 13 - I loved my teachers, my friends. Then, suddenly, you get thrown into a boys' school, and the ecosystem changed, and I wasn't sure where I fitted in. I was still always the clown, but I wasn't inspired, I guess.

We are not only warming the ocean and the planet as a whole, but we are also acidifying the ocean and changing its chemistry.