What is the human development index?
Ecology Discussion
McKee et al (2003), Jha and Bawa (2006) – Questions for Discussion
- What is the human development index? What factors does it consider? (1pt)
- What are biological hotspots? Why are they important to consider for biodiversity? (1pt)
- In the context of these papers, define “exogenous factors”. Give two examples of exogenous factors mentioned in the papers. (1pt)
- McKee et al 2003, Figure 1: What two variables are being compared in this graph? Why is the trend between the two variables important to know? (2pts)
- McKee et al 2003, Figure 2: In your own words, describe what this graph is showing. Approximately how many countries are expected to have a net recovery of species by 2050? (2pts)
- Jha and Bawa 2006, Figure 1: For the countries described in the graph, what is the relationship between HDI and deforestation rate in the 1980s? How does that change by the 1990s? Hint: Table 2 contains the correlation coefficient and p-value for these graphs. (2pts)
- Based on the results of these studies, why is it important to conduct ecology studies over several years and across several countries? Inversely, what benefits are there to short-term studies and studies conducted at the local/regional level? (3pts)
- Both papers focused on terrestrial ecosystems and species. How might freshwater and marine ecosystems be affected differently by local increases in human population density? (3pts)
- Do you believe that there should be restrictions on developing nations for the sake of preserving biodiversity? What measures could developed countries take to help? (3pts)
- Write out the citations for both articles using Ecology formatting. (2pts)