1) Why is biodiversity important? Discuss the ways in which the value may be assigned to biodiversity. Based on your readings, describe the pros and cons of assigning value to biodiversity based on the following considerations: economics, biological value, and ecological value. What other ways can value be assigned to biodiversity?
2) Discuss whether biodiversity loss is universal or localized. Which species, groups of species, species-interactions, etc. may be more at risk? Why?
3) What is the impact of land use change on local, regional, and global ecosystems. How is human-induced landscape change similar/ different that large scale environmental-induced landscape change? Describe how the occurrence of landscape change, and the impact of landscape change on the environment might be studied.