Human Impacts

Marine ecosystems are all around us. In my case, there's one right in my own backyard! As the sign in the picture above indicates, there's a native growth protection area located directly behind my house. There's lots of foliage around, so it can be difficult to spot organisms from where we are (although we sometimes hear the frogs croaking in the evening).

The fact that this is located right in the middle of a neighborhood says quite a bit about the human impacts on the environment. This area is fenced off, so I'm guessing they don't want people walking around back there and disrupting the ecosystem. However, there are other ways that humans can interfere.We live on a bit of an incline that leads down towards the wetlands, so we're very careful with making sure we don't pollute. We try to keep this habitat healthy by taking our cars to the car wash when they need to be cleaned, since we don't want anything running down into this ecosystem. Also, we completely avoid the use of pesticides.

It can be difficult to accommodate for a marine ecosystem so close to where you live, but minimizing your negative impacts by preventing pollution is an effective way of maintaining a clean environment. If people aren't careful, there could be consequences such as unclean water in the wetlands and an unhealthy habitat for organisms.