New Caledonia is a part of a terrestrial biome with tropical and subtropical dry broad leaf forests. In addition tropical dry forests are apart of it too. Since New Caledonia is an island it's a marine ecosystem. The coral reefs play a big role in New Caledonia because it has the second largest coral reef lagoon in the world. The reef has great species diversity with a high level of endemic species and the reefs are in pretty good health. Here is the food chain/web of the ecosystem:
Net primary productivity(NPP) is the rate at which plants incorporate atmospheric carbon through photosynthesis. In this biome the NPP is 7,600 kcal/m^2/yr, which means it is high, because it has a lot of forests.
Our hotspot has a wide diversity of species only known to the island. The hotspot is used for different services like commercial fishery and underwater tourism. People coming here can see something that they will never see anywhere else. There is a lot of research on the species and people are being educated about them. By educating people, things like protecting the waves has come in place as a service to the island as well. Humid forests take over most of the biodiversity in this hotspot. They once covered 70% of the land now it only covers 22%. It has many old and ancient species of plant species. An example of some vegetation is maquis plants they are dense, dry shrubs distributed on the land. Most of the soil is poor and there is a lot of sand which takes over about 89% of the island. 2% of the original dry forests(hard-leaf) remain and there is many lowland forests. The freshwater marshes are found in the southern end of the island by mountains. The rarest conifers grow here which means we have to keep them to not being extinct. Mangrove swamps protect the island from waves and saltwater. This is where you can find estuaries and lagoons. This hotspot has different genetic species that are only known to the island. Helping to this is that the island is isolated, giving it some help to keep the species there. Although this one of the smallest hotspots it contains a wide variety of rare birds, fish, invertebrates,reptiles, and mammals. Considering all the species diversity in this hotspot there has been a great deal of degradation the environment. The 3 main things that effected the environment are nickel mining, bush fires, and logging. Unfortunately these things led to deforestation, habitat destruction, erosion of mining, and destruction of streams. As the years go by it becomes harder to restore everything because more of the negative things are effecting the environment then the positive things. After all the discoveries of the rare species more people are hunting and illegally collecting the animals. A couple examples of the rare species are uvea parakeet and horned parakeet. The alien species coming such as fire ants are destroying and killing the ecosystem. New
Caledonia is a small isolated Island which means it's vulnerable for
introduced species to take over. These new species have taken a toll
on the native species, resulting in the decrease of native species.In
the 1995 the population density was only about 30 per kilometer,
while in the next 5 years the growth rate was increasing by 2.3%.
This is a very large increase in population which is bad for the
biodiversity hotspot. More and more people will start cutting down
the forests(habitats of the species) which will cause extinction. The
habitats will continue to degrade as ecosystems dominated by humans
expand. So far humans have reduced the original vegetation by 75%.Open
cast mines are scraping out soil to access ores wipes out flora.
Resulting from that came dramatic soil erosion, which lead to
metal-rich sediment transport downstream into rivers and the lagoon.Deforestation
from logging, mining, uncontrolled fires, and tourism all increase
pressure on the ecosystems by destroying important habitat. The more
mining is doing better,more people will come and try to mine more
which is hurting the forests.There's not really many "endangered" species, they're extinct or still there. Two examples of endangered species are the new Caledonian imperial-pigeon and the phosphorus bocourti-lizard. The lizard was discovered by a single man in 1870, and rediscovered in 2003, there is not many around. There is two confirmed extinct birds named the larkeet, which was named extinct in 1913 and the rail which was named extinct in the 20th century. There
is different types of conversations being implemented to try and
restore the ecosystems, but one stands out the most and it is called
the ICUN. The
ICUN plans and manages the decisions on the land. The assessments are
used to list
protected species, population size, growth rate, population
fluctuations, habitat fragmentation and range size. Since this plan
is time consuming and sometimes the data isn't there to assess, there
is another thing called narrow endemics species( NES).
This is where people distribute the narrow endemic species to see
where the issues are coming from. This NES assessment can then help
with more detailed looks at individual species.The image below shows the map of protected NES in the hotspot:
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New Caledonia is one of the smallest hotspots in the world with 6,900 sq.miles of land, made up of reefs,atolls,small islands,humid forests, maquises, dry forests, and freshwater lakes and streams. It has a wide variety of plant and animal biodiversity, consisting of ancient plant species, fish, birds,mammals,etc. However the New Caledonia ecosystem is degrading from human intervention involving mining for nickel, bush fires, logging, poaching, and invasive species. Human population growth is causing an environmental footprint on the ecosystem, causing the cutting down of forests to make room for living. I learned that it is not as easy to restore or think of ways to preserve the area as I thought it would be. For example there is always a negative part of a plan like in the ICUN it is too slow or there isn't data to be found. Then with the NES, that's only a small part of the conservation process there is so much more to do to try and save the hotspot. Hopefully the ICUN and NES could work together to help protect this biodiversity hotspot.
Miller, Tyler G. and Spoolman Scott E. Living in the Environment (17th Edition). (pp. 65-66) Belmont, California: Brooks/Cole Cengage Learning, 2012. Print.
Themes, Elegant. "Great Barrier Reef Food Web." Great Barrier Reef Australia. N.p., n.d. Web. 08 Dec. 2014.
Wulff, Adrien. Conservation Priorities in a Biodiversity Hotspot: Analysis of Narrow Endemic Plant Species in New Caledonia, Web. 7 Dec. 2014. ‹http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0073371#abstract0›.
