EcologyBiomes and Ecosystems

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Ecosystems- Matter and Energy

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Primary Production

http://www.bigelow.org/foodweb/chemosynthesis.jpg

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Visualizing Matter & Energy

There are a variety of diagrams that help us visualize how energy, biomass, matter, and even number of organisms interact in a particular community or ecosystem. It is important that you look carefully at the diagrams and understand what it says about that ecosystem in terms of matter and/or energy.

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Primary Production made by Primary Producers

Gross primary productivity is the total amount of energy that producers convert to chemical energy in organic molecules per unit of time.

Then the plant must use some energy to supports its own processes with cellular respiration such as growth, opening and closing it’s stomata, etc.

What is left over in that same amount of time is net primary productivity which is the energy available to be used by another organism.

Primary Production

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Net Product Pyramid

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Trophic Level Human Population

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• I think this slide should go up with the other pyramid slides even though it’s about populations

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Biomass Pyramids

Pyramid of Numbers

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Energy Transformation

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Biogeochemical Cycle

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Nitrogen Cycle

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Phosphorus Cycle

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Water Cycle

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Carbon Cycle

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Nutrient Cycling

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20http://www.theenergylibrary.com/files/images/Energy_Allocation.screen.jpg

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Now that we have examined the flow of energy and the cycling of matter, let’s examine biomes from the biosphere.

Aquatic Biome Distribution

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Lake Stratification

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Zonation

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Marine Zonation

Lake Zonation

Freshwater

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Wetlands & Estuaries

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Transitional Zones between freshwater and marine. This water tends to be a mix of both depending on its geographic location. The water is often referred to as brackish

Tide Zone

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Coral Reef

Benthos

Marine Biomes

Black Smoker

Terrestrial Biomes

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Tropical Rain Forest

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Savanna

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Desert

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Chaparral- also called Scrubland

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Temperate Grasslands

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Temperate Forest

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Taiga

Also called Coniferous or Boreal Forest 1. precipitation usually snow 2. conifers like spruce, fir, hemlock3. soil acidic and forms slowly

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Tundra

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Biosphere

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What happens when a cycle is out of balance?

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Cycles can have an anthropogenic (man-made) or a non-anthropogenic (natural phenomena) impact that causes a cycle to become unbalanced. Additionally, this may just be the natural state of that ecosystem as a consequence of the availability of nutrients.Two examples involving imbalanced freshwater habitats include:

Oligotrophic waters- low primary productivityEutrophic waters- high primary productivity

Eutrophic

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Oligotrophic Lake

Eutrophication- The Algal Bloom

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Experimental Data

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The following data was collected from 14 different rivers in Virginia.

Use the Station 1 data to calculate the Primary Productivity of a water sample.

Report your answer in units of mg Carbon fixed/Liter

The needed conversion factors are found on the student formula sheet

Answers to Previous Slides

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Station 1

4.2 mg O2/L 0.698 = 2.9 mL O2/L

2.9 mL O2/L 0.526= 1.6 mg Carbon fixed/L

Created by:

Susan RamseyVASSNotable contributions by S. Meister