Habitat Fragmentation

Habitat fragmentation is the breaking up of a large, continuous habitat into smaller, isolated patches, a process that reduces total habitat area, increases the ratio of edge to interior habitat, and isolates the remaining fragments from one another. It can arise from natural processes such as volcanic activity, wildfire, and long-term climate change, but in the modern era it is driven mainly by human activity, including agriculture, urban development, and the construction of reservoirs and roads; tropical deforestation and the near-total loss of North American tallgrass prairie are frequently cited examples. Fragmentation degrades biodiversity and ecosystem function by reducing gene flow between isolated populations, increasing inbreeding and genetic drift, altering predation and migration patterns, and leaving small populations more vulnerable to local extinction. This description is adapted from Wikipedia contributors under CC BY-SA 4.0; changes were made. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/