Geodiversity of Samoa
摘要
Nature itself classified in two categories: living and non-living. The living part of nature includes the whole range of diversity of flora and fauna together with the environment they occupy creates biodiversity (DeLong 1996; Sarkar 2002). In more clear terminology: “biodiversity/biological diversity is species, genetic, and ecosystem diversity in an area, sometimes including associated abiotic components such as landscape features, drainage systems, and climate” outlined by Swingland (2013). Definition of biodiversity has a lot of different variations, but in general it is covering population of different species in chosen environment expressed as a number density of specific species-specific features. On the other hand, non-living nature is covering all other properties of the environment. These properties together can be explained through the term of geodiversity, but the exact definition of geodiversity also broad and varies greatly from pure number density estimates of specific geological features (e.g., number of geological units within a specifically define hierarchy system) to systematics that also provide some valorization of the relative abundance of the abiotic elements (Zakharovskyi et al. 2022). The term of geodiversity has been refined for the last 40 years in more relevant to spatial variations of specific abiotic features, but on current state it is understood as an analogy to biodiversity (Brilha et al. 2018; Burnelli et al. 2023; dos Santos et al. 2020). It cannot be strict analogy to the terminology of biodiversity, as sometimes they can share some of the elements depend on descriptive information, for example the soil element. The element of soil cover is composition of geological and biological matter (mineral and organic parts), which making it act as transition zone between abiotic and biotic nature. Hence, the clear definition about geodiversity does not exist yet, like the clear (or at least clearer or more broadly accepted way) definition of biodiversity. Therefore, researchers most of the time outline the definition, which they, or their methods more in match.