Impacts on the Ecological System's and Landscapes of Agricultural in Desert Environments

Impacts on the Ecological System's and Landscapes of Agricultural in Desert Environments

Introduction

Human interventions on ecological system and a challenge to conserving the environment and biodiversity that is now gradually perverse. Rapid incessant environmental changes as a result of increasing human population and activities have impacted the biotic and abiotic structures and processes within ecosystems. Among these, agriculture has impacts the ecological system and the environment; Agriculture causes disturbances in forests (deforestation, illegal logging) and other lands (associated with land clearance, slash-and-burn practice, plantation) in the product for example food, fiber, fuel, and pharmaceuticals (Valentine, 2005). Therefore, it is not surprising that agriculture has had major effects on the wider social and biophysical environment.

Agriculture is one of the primary ways that humans interact with, modify, and deplete or enrich the biodiversity and resilience of their environments. Since the Neolithic revolution, the shift from primarily hunter-gatherer lifestyle in the Paleolithic to settled farming communities circa 10,000 B.C.E., agriculture has been not only a means of survival but also a complex cultural institution that converges with political and economic institutions and with ecological events. In spite of its long history, agriculture has been somewhat marginalized within philosophical discourse (Lipper, 2007).

Nevertheless, philosophers have emphasized the crucial philosophical and ethical issues raised by contemporary agriculture, including the decline of the family farm, labor, sustainable development, biotechnology, and urban farming. The history of agriculture in the 20th and 21st centuries brings each of these questions into focus, replete with meanings that go beyond subsistence to questions of democracy and justice. This paper will focus on the impacts of the agricultural activities in deserts and development the impacts on the physical and biotic environment. The paper will discuss agricultural impacts on ecological systems in the general and it will focus on the agricultural impacts in desert environments.

Discussion

1- What are general impacts agricultural has on environments?

Global environmental systems have been profoundly affected by agriculture throughout the Holocene epoch, but these impacts have been especially pronounced since the Green Revolution began around 1945. The environmental effects of food production include alterations of the Earth's hydrologic cycle, increasing levels of atmospheric greenhouse gases, decreased biodiversity, accelerated rates of soil erosion, and the rapid spread of eutrophication in freshwater and marine ecosystems.

The Agricultural Revolution

Crop plants were first domesticated around 10,000 yrs. (years) ago, when centers of crop domestication emerged independently in the Eastern Mediterranean, Asia, Africa, and the Americas. The three staple grains that today account for more than 60% of all caloric intake—wheat, rice, and corn—were all domesticated by ca. 7,000 yrs. BP (before present). However, the domestication events themselves were inconsequential in terms of immediate environmental change (Lipper, 2007). The pervasive and lasting imprints of the agricultural revolution on the global environmental commons did not begin to develop until ca. 4,000 to 5,000 yrs. BP, when agriculture was rapidly emerging across the globe as the primary means of food procurement.

Forest Clearance: Ecosystem and Atmospheric Impacts

Between 5,000 and ...