Perseus@School
Marine biodiversity
The following document provides a definition of biodiversity with focus on the marine one. Mainly explaining how biodiversity is the variety of life with three major distinctions such as genetic, species and ecosystem variety. Marine biodiversity is of main importance playing a vital role in biogeochemical processes, affecting the conservation of life in the biosphere. Despite the fact that the Mediterranean waters account for 0.8% of the total ocean surface and 0.32% of ocean volume, it hosts a wide variety of organisms, with over 12,000 species of plants and animals. Moreover, the proportion of endemic species (species that live exclusively on this) exceeds 25% of the total. Currently, the Mediterranean organism variety is the result of evolution through a series of geological, climatic and hydrological changes that occurred in the last 200 million years. Major threats of biodiversity are the alteration or partial loss of a habitat, overexploitation of resources (e.g. overfishing), pollution, climate change, acidification (changes in waters pH), introduced or invasive species (alien species), and intensive shipping.
Keywords: biodiversity, climate change, alien species, pollution, overexploitation of resources, shipping, ocean acidification
It is expected that each country will produce its own document on the selected issue.
Languages: Greek, English, French, Arabic, Turkish, Romanian, Italian, Spanish, Bulgarian, Croatian, Portuguese
The following document provides a definition of biodiversity with focus on the marine one. Mainly explaining how biodiversity is the variety of life with three major distinctions such as genetic, species and ecosystem variety. Marine biodiversity is of main importance playing a vital role in biogeochemical processes, affecting the conservation of life in the biosphere. Despite the fact that the Mediterranean waters account for 0.8% of the total ocean surface and 0.32% of ocean volume, it hosts a wide variety of organisms, with over 12,000 species of plants and animals. Moreover, the proportion of endemic species (species that live exclusively on this) exceeds 25% of the total. Currently, the Mediterranean organism variety is the result of evolution through a series of geological, climatic and hydrological changes that occurred in the last 200 million years. Major threats of biodiversity are the alteration or partial loss of a habitat, overexploitation of resources (e.g. overfishing), pollution, climate change, acidification (changes in waters pH), introduced or invasive species (alien species), and intensive shipping.
Keywords: biodiversity, climate change, alien species, pollution, overexploitation of resources, shipping, ocean acidification
It is expected that each country will produce its own document on the selected issue.
Languages: Greek, English, French, Arabic, Turkish, Romanian, Italian, Spanish, Bulgarian, Croatian, Portuguese