Biodiversity
Our collective biological resources—from genes and species to ecosystems—provide us with clean air, safe drinking water, healthy crops, and innumerable other life-sustaining goods and services. Biodiversity also contributes to our quality of life, inspiring us with wonder, respect, and curiosity, and providing us with an unsurpassed source of relaxation, rejuvenation, beauty and peace.
Yet, as scientists well know, the diversity of Earth's biota is increasingly threatened by myriad human activities. Air and water pollution, invasive species, global climate change, deforestation, overuse of resources, and urban sprawl and other land use changes are destroying and damaging habitats throughout the world and threatening ecosystems and species with extinction.
These impacts have led to our present extinction crisis. Biologists estimate that human activities have increased the extinction rate to several hundred times greater than the natural rate. Slowing biodiversity loss will require policy action—protection and restoration of forests, wetlands, coral reefs, and other important habitats. It will also require human societies to reduce pollution and learn to live sustainably.
Scientists can play an important role in bringing about these changes and the Sound Science Initiative provides an opportunity to do just that. By raising public awareness about the importance of our biological resources and promoting the use of credible scientific information in policy making, SSI scientists have been working to slow biodiversity loss.
For more information, visit:
Endangered Species Act
Population and Environment
Communicating Ecosystem Services
Websites about Biodiversity
