Aquatic Biodiversity: Protecting Lakes
With water shortages predicted for parts of the United States, planners are scrambling to figure out just exactly what our water needs will be for the future, and just exactly how to deal with them.
Preserving what we have.
One thing is for certain, we need to preserve the viability of the reservoirs we already have. With the continuing invasion of exotic weeds, and the persistence of the ones present, this has become a growing problem for water delivery systems across the country.
Environmental problems.
Aside from the problems with water delivery systems and transportation, that is, infrastructure, these weeds pose a potentially far more devastating problem, that problem is environmental in nature, and has to do with biodiversity in particular.
Interdependence.
In any ecosystem, animals are dependent on plant life. Plants depend to some degree on the existence of other plants for proper shade, nutrients, and other, more complex, symbiosis. The removal of one from the mix, is potentially destructive to flora and fauna. The removal of all except one, can completely alter life as we know it! The effect can be more wide spread than you might imagine, moving from one region to another rapidly, and effecting one species after another as parts of the whole dissolve!
