WHY KNOW THE ENVIRONMENTAL CHANGES ON OUR PLANET? - BIOLOGY - 2025

Planet earth has existed for an amount of time unimaginable to us human beings: approximately 4.6 billion years. However, we should not think that the environments of our planet have always been the same.

The mountains that we see today have not always existed, and neither have the animals and plants that inhabit them. When a person grows and develops, she changes. For example, our appearance when we were babies is not the same as now.

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The same has happened with our planet, as time passes, the earth has undergone a series of extremely important environmental changes.

These changes include geological cataclysms, changes in the chemical composition of the atmosphere, and changes in climate. Furthermore, the living things that inhabit the Earth (including plants and animals, including us humans) have also changed over the years.

What factors have caused the environmental changes?

Our planet has changed due to natural causes such as: changes in sunlight and the impact of meteorites on the earth's surface, volcanic eruptions, changes in the distribution of the continents, important climatic changes, changes in the level of the oceans and even changes in the polarity of the earth.

Also living organisms have caused changes on the planet. For example, when the first photosynthetic organisms appeared, the atmosphere was completely modified. Photosynthesis is the process by which plants obtain their food, and its waste product is oxygen.

Before the presence of photosynthetic organisms, the atmosphere did not have the high levels of oxygen that it has today - remember that oxygen is essential for our lives and for other living organisms.

In conclusion, environmental changes can affect life forms and life forms can also modify the environment.

Why is it useful to know the environmental changes presented in the history of our planet?

The main reasons why you should know the environmental changes that have occurred on our planet will be described below:

If we know the past, we can infer the future

Scientists spend a lot of time and energy to discover how planet earth has changed since its inception. All this information can be used to establish patterns and thus forecast the future of our planet.

It also allows us to understand what has been the impact of man as a species capable of modifying its environment. Unfortunately, our presence on earth has had more negative consequences than positive contributions.

Thanks to the knowledge of environmental changes in the past, scientists have realized that today the planet is changing in strange ways, and this is thanks to the presence of man.

In other words, humans are generating changes that go beyond the natural changes of all environmental cycles.

It allows us to differentiate between "normal" and "bad" environmental changes.

There are completely natural environmental changes, such as ice ages, for example. These processes that interact with each other and that have positive or negative effects on the different forms of life.

However, the impact that the development of human populations and civilizations has, have substantially negatively modified these environmental changes that occur naturally. We can say that the human being has altered the dynamics of these processes.

We have come to the conclusion that the environmental patterns of the past are not being repeated thanks to the presence of the human being. That is why we must become environmentally aware and acquire more environmentally friendly lifestyles.

If you want to contribute in a positive way, you can take simple actions such as reducing your energy consumption or taking shorter showers.

It allows us to measure the impact of man

Our lifestyle (such as industrial activities, for example) harm the environment and living organisms, such as plants and animals. So-called “climate change” for example, is a major risk factor for biodiversity around the world.

In addition, we have contributed to desertification, increased migration, industrial transformation, changes in land use, availability of fresh water, pressure on food production systems.

It allows us to understand evolution

So far we have been able to conclude that planet earth has changed its physical characteristics over time. However, its inhabitants have also changed.

Within the biological sciences, evolution is one of the most important concepts. If we could travel through time, we would realize that as we observe different eras, the species that live on earth have changed remarkably.

Previously, people believed that species had been created in separate events and had remained unchanged, to this day.

However, in 1859, the naturalist Charles Darwin published his famous book The Origin of Species, proposing the mechanism of evolution and concluding that species are not immutable in time.

It is an indisputable fact that species vary over time. For example, the modern birds that we know today are probably not as similar to those that inhabited the earth thousands of years ago and environmental changes have had an effect on the process of change.

It allows us to understand the extinction processes

Knowledge of past environmental changes allows us to better understand the process of creation and destruction of species, the main objective of evolutionary biologists.

When we say that a species is extinct, we mean that all of its individuals have died, either globally or locally.

The best known example is that of the great extinction of the dinosaurs. These animals were huge reptiles that inhabited the earth and, according to scientists, could be annihilated with the impact of a meteorite in Mexico.

However, the event of the extinction of the dinosaurs has not been the only one. At least five major mass extinction events have occurred across the earth.

With the arrival of humans, many species of animals and plants are in danger. Every day we destroy and pollute the environment of hundreds and even thousands of species that keep our environments healthy.

References

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