08. Environmental Biology [DEFINITIONS] Flashcards
Environment
The environment is the complex of physical, chemical, and biotic factors that act upon an organism or an ecological community and ultimately determine its form and survival
Environmental Biology
A scientific study of the origins, functions, relationships, interactions, and natural history of living populations, communities, species, and ecosystems in relation to dynamic environmental processes.
Individual/Organism
The first organizational level of the environment is an individual. An individual is any organism or living thing which has its own characters in physiology, evolution and behavior in relation to environmental factors.
Population
A group of individuals of the same species, living in the same area and producing fertile offspring through interbreeding is a population
Community
A collection of populations of different species living in the same area interacting with each other is a community.
Ecosystem
An ecosystem is a collection of communities as well as the abiotic factors with which they interact
Biosphere
The biosphere includes the entire portion of Earth that is inhabited by life.
Abiotic Factors
The non living components (physical and chemical factors) of the environment such as water, air, light, temperature, nutrients, sunlight, soil.
Biotic Components
The living components of the ecosystem including plants, animals, fungi, bacteria, protists, etc.
Niche
A niche is the role that a particular organism plays in the ecosystem, describing what it needs to live and what it does in a particular ecosystem.
Habitat
The habitat is the physical area where a species lives.
Trophic Level
The producers and consumers in an ecosystem can be arranged into several feeding groups, each known as a trophic level (feeding level)
Food Chain
A food chain is a linear sequence of organisms through which nutrients and energy pass from one trophic level to another trophic level of an ecosystem beginning with a primary producer
Primary Producer
The primary producers are autotrophs and are most often photosynthetic organisms such as plants, algae, or cyanobacteria. These organisms convert light energy to chemical energy or in another words, produce organic matter.
Primary Production
Primary production is the amount of organic matter produced by autotrophs in a given area during a given period of time. (unit: gm-2day-1 or kg ha-1 year -1)
Primary Consumers
The organismsm that consume (eat) primary producers
Habitat loss/ fragmentation
When natural habitats are converted into other human uses such as agriculture or built up areas, they are no longer able to support species found in the original habitat, resulting in destruction or displacement of biodiversity. This is called habitat loss/ fragmentation.
Overexploitation
Harvesting or exploiting biodiversity products in a manner and a rate which it cannot recover within the periods of exploitation leads to danger of biodiversity being completely lost is thus.
Pollution
Pollution simply means addition of unwanted materials to air, water, soil.
Eutrophication
Due to extensive use of agrochemicals that wash away with rain water into the water bodies make the water rich in nutrients (eutrophication) resulting in algal blooms.
