Nonnative Invasive Plants - The Invasion of America by the Yellow Starthistle :: Horticulture Ecology Environment

Nonnative Invasive Plants - The Invasion of America by the Yellow Starthistle Introduction Our planet is made up of seven continents and seven oceans holding hundreds of thousands of environments and ecosystems, each with unique variations, compositions, and distinctions, and each carefully balanced in the functions of its different members. Over time, equilibria have been reached, as the organisms that populate areas stabilized, intermingled, and interacted with weather, soil, water availability, and other innumerable environmental factors. This is not to say that such environments are stagnant, for they are far from it. In order to remain healthy and profitable, however, change must happen slowly in an ecosystem, so that all members of the ecological community can adapt and survive. Radical change results in dangerous instability and threatens the livability of the system for the animals, plants, and even humans who depend upon it. As systems are vastly different and extremely delicate, species that are successful, profitable and enhance the livability in one area are sometimes entirely inapplicable and in fact dangerous in another. It is for this reason that we find ourselves confronted, in recent history, with a relatively new problem: nonnative species invasion. As human populations have begun to engage in widespread travel, exchanges, and modification attempts worldwide, they have also--both knowingly and unknowingly--introduced, transported, and intermingled species between ecosystems in a manner that is neither gradual nor delicate. Imbalances and frailties have ensued in the very ecosystems upon which we depend for our survival, health, and economic success. New animals, plants, bacteria, and organisms of all shapes and sizes and from every kingdom are being introduced to once stable environments on a regular basis through human carelessness and ignorance. Once introduced, they often negatively affect their newfound homes, taking over with unexpected force and threatening the native organisms. Many are well known, like Kudzu, an oriental plant initially introduced for erosion control, which now covers millions of acres in the Southern United States, or the tiny Zebra Mussel, originally found in Poland, which now blocks water supply and treatment systems nationwide. Invasive species are not a distant threat which will make their effects felt twenty or thirty years from now. They compose a current problem having major impacts on life and industry everywhere, and the magnitude of this problem continues to grow.