In 2009, James Cameron produced and directed the fictional movie Avatar. Avatar is set in the year 2154, on an Earth-like planet called Pandora. Pandora consists of breathtaking sceneries and magnificent inter-connected ecosystems. This planet is inhabited by native, blue humanoid creatures called The Na’vi. These natives have the ability to connect to the animals, and the plants on Pandora, by connecting fiber like structures at the end of their hair to the organisms in order to communicate with it.
In this film, the Earth became almost inhabitable due to the loss of resources, overpopulation, war, and increase in pollution. Thus, humans were set to locate other planets with resources for colonization. On their mission, humans found Pandora and found that it is rich with a mineral named unobtanium, which could be used to save the earth. This lead the humans to start mining and destroying the ecosystem to harvest the minerals of the land.
I nominated this movie as a second choice movie, because this is a very well made movie and very futuristic. This movie explores topics like habitat fragmentation and loss, and impacts of mining and heavy metals on plant communities. As explained previously, humans have stated exploring other planets because the Earth is no depleted of its resources and cannot be inhabited due to pollution, and over population. Thus, humans were set on finding minerals from other planets with rich vegetations to mine, in order to save Earth. This resulted in the almost destruction of the planet Pandora due to the removal of the mother tree, which connects all life forms on this planet.
References: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avatar_(2009_film)#Na’vi
Applied Plant Ecology Winter 2020 