A new study published online by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) is the first to determine whether genetic changes resulting from fishing pressure have any significant economic effects for the case ...
Ecology
Jul 16, 2013
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(Phys.org) —A ground-breaking new study challenges popular assumptions about the feeding behaviour of the world's largest predatory fish, the white shark.
Plants & Animals
Mar 20, 2013
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Water resources can become strained by both natural factors such as drought and by human factors such as unsustainable use. Water resource managers can develop practices to reduce overuse of water resources, but they cannot ...
Environment
Mar 15, 2013
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Almost 30 percent of fish stocks monitored by the UN's food agency are overexploited, undermining the crucial role sustainable fisheries play in providing food and jobs for millions, a report said Monday.
Ecology
Jul 9, 2012
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Centuries of overexploitation of fish and other marine resources — as well as invasion of fish from the Red Sea — have turned some formerly healthy ecosystems of the Mediterranean Sea into barren places, an unprecedented ...
Ecology
Mar 1, 2012
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What caused the collapse of the Cambodian city of Angkor, the largest preindustrial city in the world, 600 years ago? Previous research suggests war and overexploitation of the land were to blame, but a new study says drought ...
Environment
Jan 23, 2012
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The massive overexploitation of Madagascar's tropical woods is endangering the island's unique flora and fauna. A project by ETH Zurich and Zurich Zoo aims to make the illegal wood trade more difficult through a new declaration ...
Ecology
Oct 17, 2011
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For the first time, all species of scombrids (tunas, bonitos, mackerels and Spanish mackerels) and billfishes (swordfish and marlins) have been assessed for the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. Of the 61 known species, ...
Ecology
Jul 7, 2011
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A microscopic chytrid fungus is causing massive declines in frog populations all over the world and even the extinction of certain species. Together with colleagues from Europe and the USA, researchers from the University ...
Plants & Animals
Jun 21, 2011
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Aggressive male mating behavior might well be a successful reproductive strategy for the individual but it can drive the species to extinction, an international research team headed by evolutionary biologist Daniel Rankin ...
Plants & Animals
May 16, 2011
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Overexploitation, also called overharvesting, refers to harvesting a renewable resource to the point of diminishing returns. Sustained overexploitation can lead to the destruction of the resource. The term applies to natural resources such as: wild medicinal plants, grazing pastures, fish stocks, forests and water aquifers.
In ecology, overexploitation describes one of the five main activities threatening global biodiversity. Ecologists use the term to describe populations that are harvested at a rate that is unsustainable, given their natural rates of mortality and capacities for reproduction. This can result in extinction at the population level and even extinction of whole species. In conservation biology the term is usually used in the context of human economic activity that involves the taking of biological resources, or organisms, in larger numbers than their populations can withstand. The term is also used and defined somewhat differently in fisheries, hydrology and natural resource management.
Overexploitation can lead to resource destruction, including extinctions. However it is also possible for overexploitation to be sustainable, as discussed below in the section on fisheries. In the context of fishing, the term overfishing can be used instead of overexploitation, as can overgrazing in stock management, overlogging in forest management, overdrafting in aquifer management, and endangered species in species monitoring. Overexploitation is not an activity limited to humans. Introduced predators and herbivores, for example, can overexploit native flora and fauna.
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