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Ecosystems and Food Webs
Ecosystems and Food Webs

... what it would be like if decomposers didn’t break down dead plants and animals!  ...
Introduction to Marine Life
Introduction to Marine Life

... – all this material sinks out of reach Surface nutrients get used up (by plants to make plant tissue) they become a limiting factor for the growth of new plants which are only found in surface waters Nutrients are returned to surface waters by a special type of current called 'upwelling' ...
Chap 9 14e
Chap 9 14e

... includes 58 major national parks, along with 335 monuments and historic sites. States, counties, and cities also operate public parks. • Popularity is one of the biggest problems. Noisy and polluting vehicles degrade the aesthetic experience for many visitors, destroy or damage fragile vegetation, a ...
Ecosystems and Food Webs
Ecosystems and Food Webs

... what it would be like if decomposers didn’t break down dead plants and animals!  ...
Soil Biodiversity
Soil Biodiversity

Biodiversity, productivity and stability in real food webs
Biodiversity, productivity and stability in real food webs

... study, which showed that increased production in highdiversity assemblages might render them more vulnerable to drought, thereby reducing their resistance and resilience [30]. Although these two studies do not support the above-cited results that more diverse communities are more stable, they show h ...
Midterm Review
Midterm Review

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11 Carrying Capacity - Mr. Smith`s Website
11 Carrying Capacity - Mr. Smith`s Website

... mouse population can grow. However, extra mice will eat all the available food. Hungry rodents soon become sickly––making them easy prey for the hawks, owls, and foxes. The mouse population will decline again until it is at or below the carrying capacity. Populations fluctuate regularly due to an in ...
Communities - SinclairsBio
Communities - SinclairsBio

... How do unfavorable abiotic and biotic factors affect species? How do ranges of tolerance affect the distribution of organisms? What are the stages of primary and secondary succession? ...
Flood Hazard Location Maps
Flood Hazard Location Maps

... Biodiversity is a broad concept, so a variety of objective measures have been created in order to empirically measure biodiversity. For practical conservationists, this measure should quantify a value that is broadly shared among locally affected people. For others, a more economically defensible de ...
01 - cloudfront.net
01 - cloudfront.net

... Test Prep Pretest In the space provided, write the letter of the term or phrase that best completes each statement or best answers each question. ...
Habitat and Niche
Habitat and Niche

... niches, which can overlap, but there must be distinct differences between any two niches. When plants and animals are introduced, either intentionally or by accident, into a new environment, they can occupy the existing niches of native organisms. Sometimes new species out-compete native species, an ...
4-2 What Shapes an Ecosystem?
4-2 What Shapes an Ecosystem?

... Community Interactions When organisms live together in ecological communities, they interact constantly. Community interactions, such as competition, predation, and various forms of symbiosis, can affect an ecosystem. ...
Barriers to Biodiversity
Barriers to Biodiversity

... Estimated Duration: 30 minutes discussion, 30 minutes small group work, 50 minutes presentations, 10 minutes wrap-up Materials: paper and pencils or pens ...
Essential terms to know in Ecology
Essential terms to know in Ecology

... Biodegradable: Capable of being broken down by natural biological processes; i.e. the activities of decomposer organisms. Examples of biodegradable items include paper, wood and plant material. Biodiversity: The amount of biological or living diversity in an area. It includes the concepts of specie ...
Succession Worksheet
Succession Worksheet

... the community. This series of predictable changes that occurs in a community over time is called ecological succession. Ecological succession is slow and gradual; it occurs over a period of many years. As ecological succession occurs, types of species present in a community will change in response t ...
Climate Change and Ecosystems of the Southwestern United States
Climate Change and Ecosystems of the Southwestern United States

... soils and the potential for ecosystems to sequester carbon. This is due to differences in the way soil microbial populations and plants respond to moisture entering the soil following rainfall events of different sizes. Larger rainfall events increase the wetting depth in the soil profile, and there ...
ecosystem - Cloudfront.net
ecosystem - Cloudfront.net

... – Humans, bears, crows, and other omnivores eat both plants and animals – Detritivores such as mites, earthworms, snails, and crabs, feed on plant and animal remains and other dead matter, collectively called detritus – Another important group of heterotrophs, called decomposers, breaks down organic ...
Soil fauna in rainfed paddy field ecoystems: their role in organic
Soil fauna in rainfed paddy field ecoystems: their role in organic

... marshes, and in the ocean. The earthworm body length varies from a few centimeters to 2-3 meters (Edwards and Bohlen 1996), with the live biomass commonly ranging from 30 to 100 g m-2 (Lavelle and Spain 2001). The social insect group termites (Isoptera) consists of approximately 2600 species worldwi ...
Study Guide KEY - Kawameeh Middle School
Study Guide KEY - Kawameeh Middle School

... When predator population size increases – prey will decrease When predator population size decrease – prey will over populate 20. Define producer: an organism that creates its own energy from sunlight; first organism in food chain 21. Define decomposer: organism that breaks down dead organisms and r ...
W2 Workshop Report
W2 Workshop Report

... simulated if relevant for the respective ecosystem. Such experiments would be needed to identify slow trends embedded in highly variable environments.  Population genetic and functional genomic analyses need to be applied more widely.  Models need to be examined as to whether they formulate physio ...
SC.912.L.17.5
SC.912.L.17.5

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Lesson Plan
Lesson Plan

primary consumer - FreshmanBiology
primary consumer - FreshmanBiology

... inhabiting a particular area  A biological community is – an assemblage of all the populations of organisms living close enough together for potential interaction and – described by its species composition. ...
Interactions among organisms can
Interactions among organisms can

... In most animals, oxygen reacts with carbon-containing molecules (sugars) to provide energy and produce carbon dioxide (CO2) waste. Anaerobic bacteria get their energy needs in other chemical processes that do not require oxygen. Aerobic bacteria do require oxygen. The total amount of matter in an ec ...
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Ecosystem



An ecosystem is a community of living organisms in conjunction with the nonliving components of their environment (things like air, water and mineral soil), interacting as a system. These biotic and abiotic components are regarded as linked together through nutrient cycles and energy flows. As ecosystems are defined by the network of interactions among organisms, and between organisms and their environment, they can be of any size but usually encompass specific, limited spaces (although some scientists say that the entire planet is an ecosystem).Energy, water, nitrogen and soil minerals are other essential abiotic components of an ecosystem. The energy that flows through ecosystems is obtained primarily from the sun. It generally enters the system through photosynthesis, a process that also captures carbon from the atmosphere. By feeding on plants and on one another, animals play an important role in the movement of matter and energy through the system. They also influence the quantity of plant and microbial biomass present. By breaking down dead organic matter, decomposers release carbon back to the atmosphere and facilitate nutrient cycling by converting nutrients stored in dead biomass back to a form that can be readily used by plants and other microbes.Ecosystems are controlled both by external and internal factors. External factors such as climate, the parent material which forms the soil and topography, control the overall structure of an ecosystem and the way things work within it, but are not themselves influenced by the ecosystem. Other external factors include time and potential biota. Ecosystems are dynamic entities—invariably, they are subject to periodic disturbances and are in the process of recovering from some past disturbance. Ecosystems in similar environments that are located in different parts of the world can have very different characteristics simply because they contain different species. The introduction of non-native species can cause substantial shifts in ecosystem function. Internal factors not only control ecosystem processes but are also controlled by them and are often subject to feedback loops. While the resource inputs are generally controlled by external processes like climate and parent material, the availability of these resources within the ecosystem is controlled by internal factors like decomposition, root competition or shading. Other internal factors include disturbance, succession and the types of species present. Although humans exist and operate within ecosystems, their cumulative effects are large enough to influence external factors like climate.Biodiversity affects ecosystem function, as do the processes of disturbance and succession. Ecosystems provide a variety of goods and services upon which people depend; the principles of ecosystem management suggest that rather than managing individual species, natural resources should be managed at the level of the ecosystem itself. Classifying ecosystems into ecologically homogeneous units is an important step towards effective ecosystem management, but there is no single, agreed-upon way to do this.
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