Welcome

• Grant from National Science Foundation: Fire, Atmospheric pCO2, and Climate as Alternative Primary Controls of C4-Grass Abundance: The Late-Quaternary Perspective

Overall Goals• Build on core ecosystem concepts through current research• Develop a framework for engaging students in critical thinking and active learning about ecology• Provide dynamic educational tools, lesson ideas, and online resources • Build bridges between science educators, scientists, and students

Schedule• Day 1: Ecosystems (Present)• Day 2: Paleo-ecology (Past)• Day 3: Climate Change (Future)

“The past is a key to the future”

http://angielskidlakazdego.blox.pl/resource/family_tree3_pop.jpg

Last 50 years

Last 650,000 years

0650,000Images from IPCC. 2007.

Figure SPM.1

Last 12,000 years

012,000

History of atmospheric CO2 concentrations

“The past is a key to the future”

• Characterize processes that occur over tens to thousands of years

• Baseline information; variability

• Identify phenomena outside our range of experience (e.g. novel communities, rapid changes)

• Responses to environmental change

• Testing models used to predict future changes

Primary succession in habitat with no history of plants or soil

What are ecosystems?

• Ecological systems

• All of the organisms (plants, animals, microbes) and the abiotic (sun, soil) environment with which they interact

• Community + physical & chemical environment

• These factors vary over space & time

• They provide goods & services (clean air, food, habitat)

Examples of ecosystems

Ecosystem properties

Structure• Diversity (species richness, evenness)

• Species composition (relative abundance)

• Soil type

Function• Productivity

• Decomposition

• Carbon uptake

• Nitrogen cycling

Ecosystem structure: latitudinal gradients in diversity

Ecosystem function: Net Primary Production (blue = water green = land)

% area X NPP/area = % of totalNPP

Biodiversity influences ecosystem function

Cedar Creek Ecosystem Science Reserve, Minnesota

Biom

ass

(pos

t/pr

e dr

ough

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Pre-drought species richness

Tilman and Downing. 1994.

Ecosystem Function

Elements/Nutrients Cycle : CarbonNitrogenOxygenPhosphorus

Energy Flows: sun producers consumers decomposers

http://www.globalchange.umich.edu/globalchange1/current/lectures/kling/ecosystem/ecosystem.html

Energy flow: food & trophic relationships

Producers (autotrophs)

Consumers(heterotrophs)

Food energy available to humans

Carbon cycle

Buried carbonate60,000

Biome: a major type of terrestrial community categorized by its dominant plant form, seasonality of leaves, leaf morphology, latitude.

Geography of biomes

Geography of grass-dominated biomes

Jacobs et al. 1999.

Importance of grasslands

in C3 plants RUBISCO also binds with O2, especially at high temperatures (photorespiration)

Calvin Benson cycle

Photosynthetic pathways

Controls of biome distributions and ecosystem processes