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What is an ecosystem? Should you care?
Hmm? I've found it's worth struggling to answer this question because coming up with an answer provides a helpful framework for seeing, reading and exploring Stanley Park's natural and urban landscapes. Simply put, a few minutes devoted to this question enriches the experience of each visit, and it almost always does so, in new, and unexpected ways.
If you're like me, a visit to Stanley Park often begins with the question, Where will I walk today? Its basically a question about ecosystems. Should I go to the seashore, into the forest, or around the lake(s)? Each park ecosystem - marine, forest, aquatic (freshwater) - has its own, disitinctive biotic and abiotic features.
Think of an ecosystem has having three parts
- a community of living organisms, its biotic component
- plants and animals
- fungi and bacteria
- non-living features of the environment, the abiotic component
- and the web of relationships that connects all of the living and non-living components
British Columbia's rich biological diversity is due, in part, to its
- physiographicallly varied landscape with 25,700 km coastline and complex mountainous terrain
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Stanley Park
Explorer
Copyright © 2003
All Rights Reserved
http://www.stanleyparkexplorer.ca
Produced by Peter Woods
Interpretive Programs and Design Services
Vancouver BC [604] 644-0110
naturalist@stanleyparkexplorer.ca
Revised: Jan 19 2007
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