What impacts does agriculture have on ecosystems and biodiversity?

Do ecosystems need humans?

• Us humans highly dependent on ecosystems and the benefits they provide such as food and drinkable water. In return, our activities affected ecosystems' degradation in which we have created great impacts on environmental cycles, especially in recent years, through increases in freshwater use, carbon dioxide emissions, and fertilizer use. Humans need water, animal and plant populations for their survival needs but do they need us? Do ecosystems need humans or us humans just a burden on ecosystems? Thanks

• Answer:

  I think it depends on which ecosystems you're talking about. There are ecosystems which have had plenty of time to evolve and adapt to our presence, at least up until the cultural shifts and population boom of the past three or four centuries. Humans have been in Africa for a couple of million years, and were probably an important part of that ecosystem for most of that time. Even as ravaged as the environment is now, if we were removed completely from some of those areas, it wouldn't be able to bounce back to being the same ecosystem. We've also created a number of ecosystems of our own in the process of civilization. There are numerous species of plants and animals (and probably all of the other kingdoms too) which actually thrive in the environments we've created. Most of them are probably also capable of thriving without us, but a few probably would not, because we have selected for traits which are incompatible with survival in the wild. And then there are the predators out there which we have outcompeted to extinction, or near extinction, making us the primary natural enemies of their original prey. Without us, the population of those other species would probably skyrocket out of control, which could threaten their survival in the length of time it takes for new natural predators to emerge, or old ones to return to their original populations.