More than anything else, biodiversity is about the isolation of different breeding populations by barriers, and their connection by bridges. For example, the Bering Land Bridge connecting the lands of Asia and North America was a barrier between the seas of the Pacific and Arctic Oceans. When bridges open, previously isolated populations create an increase in local diversity at the expense of global diversity. This scene of the Verrazzano Narrows Bridge between New York's mainland and Long Island helps make them one place culturally. The explorer for whom the bridge was named, Geovanni da Verrazzano, helped bridge the populations of Europe and New England in the 1520s.