Habitat fragmentation

Predicted fragmentation and destruction of Great Ape habitat in Central Africa, from the GLOBIO[1] and GRASP projects in 2002. Areas shown in black and red delineate areas of severe and moderate habitat loss, respectively.
Deforestation in Europe. France is the most deforested country in Europe, with only 15% of the native vegetation remaining.
Deforestation in Bolivia, 2016.

Habitat fragmentation describes the emergence of discontinuities (fragmentation) in an organism's preferred environment (habitat), causing population fragmentation and ecosystem decay.[2] Causes of habitat fragmentation include geological processes that slowly alter the layout of the physical environment[3] (suspected of being one of the major causes of speciation[3]), and human activity such as land conversion, which can alter the environment much faster and causes the extinction of many species. More specifically, habitat fragmentation is a process by which large and contiguous habitats get divided into smaller, isolated patches of habitats.[4][5]

  1. ^ "GLOBIO: Africa". GLOBIO. Archived from the original on 30 Oct 2005.
  2. ^ Schlaepfer, Daniel R.; Braschler, Brigitte; Rusterholz, Hans-Peter; Baur, Bruno (October 2018). "Genetic effects of anthropogenic habitat fragmentation on remnant animal and plant populations: a meta-analysis". Ecosphere. 9 (10). Bibcode:2018Ecosp...9E2488S. doi:10.1002/ecs2.2488. ISSN 2150-8925.
  3. ^ a b Sahney, S.; Benton, M. J.; Falcon-Lang, H. J. (1 December 2010). "Rainforest collapse triggered Pennsylvanian tetrapod diversification in Euramerica" (PDF). Geology. 38 (12): 1079–1082. Bibcode:2010Geo....38.1079S. doi:10.1130/G31182.1.
  4. ^ Fahrig, Lenore (2019). "Habitat fragmentation: A long and tangled tale". Global Ecology and Biogeography. 28 (1): 33–41. Bibcode:2019GloEB..28...33F. doi:10.1111/geb.12839. ISSN 1466-8238. S2CID 91260144.
  5. ^ Cite error: The named reference Fahrig2003 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).