37.14-37.22 Flashcards
37.14 has a review of
chemicals cycling and energy flowing.
How do chemical cycles in an ecosystem different from food chains in a community?
The components of food chains are solely biotic. In ecosystems, chemicals pass through one one more abiotic components as well as passing through biotic components (food chain).
How much solar energy does earth receive per day.
10^19 kilocalorie=100 million atomic bombs
What is a calorie?
a unit of energy equivalent to the heat energy needed to raise the temperature of 1 gram of water by 1 °C (now often defined as equal to 4.1868 joules).
How much of the energy that the earth receives is used for photosynthesis?
1%
What is primary production?
The amount of solar energy converted to chemical energy (in organic compounds) by an ecosystem’s producers for a given area during a given time. expressed as units of energy or mass.
Define biomass.
mass of living organic material in an ecosystem.
What is the primary production of the biosphere per year?
165 billion tons biomass.
Define net primary production?
Amount of biomass-amount used by organisms for cellular respiration.
What biomes have the highest rate of primary production?
algae beds and coral reefs, followed by tropical rain forests, then estuaries. However, because they are limited in space, they do not produce the most per year.
What biome has the lowest rate of primary production?
deserts and scrubs, the open ocean and the tundra.
Where on all of earth does the most net primary production come from?
Open ocean. It covers 65% of surface area.
Desert and semidesert scrubs cover about the same amount of surface area as tropical forests, but contribute less than 1% of Earth’s net primary production, while rainforests contribute 22%. Explain this difference.
The primary production, due to the biomes location, is 20 times greater.
Describe the interaction of biomass between a producer and a primary consumer.
A caterpillar will only receive 15% of the biomass it ate of leaves, because it uses it for cellular respiration and also comes out as waste. That remaining 15% is all the biomass that the caterpillar has.
What does a pyramid of production in a food chain illustrate?
The cumulative loss of energy with each transfer in a food chain. It represents the the chemical energy, or biomass, present in each trophic level of the food chain.
What is the efficiency of energy range, in food chains?
5-20%, meaning that 95-80% is lost between trophic level.
What is efficiency of energy?
How much chemical energy is preserved between trophic levels.
Why do higher level consumers need larger amounts of land to survive?
Because they only received a fraction of the energy which the producer have.
Why are ecosystems limited to3-5 trophic levels?
Because too much energy would be lost to have any higher levels.
Do vegetarians or meat-eaters receive more energy.
Vegetarians, as they are eating producers rather than consumers, and therefore have more energy.
why is eating animals higher up the food chain, like cows, more expensive?
Cows require food. So, more land must be cultivated, more water used for irrigation, more fossil fuels be burned and more chemical fertilizers and pesticides be applied to croplands. Meat is costly economically and environmentally.
Why does demand for meat also tend to drive up princes of grains such as wheat and rice, fruits, and vegetables?
The potential supply of plants for direct consumption as food for humans is diminished by the use of agricultural land to grow feed for cattle, chickens and other meat sources.
What is the per Capita consumption of meat per year in the U.S., India and Mexico?
276 lbs., 137 lbs. and 7 pounds respectively. Hinduism prevents meat eating.
What are biogeochemical cycles?
chemical cycles in an ecosystem including both biotic and abiotic factors.
What is an abiotic reservoir?
a place where chemicals are accumulated outside of living organisms. Geologic processes such as erosion contribute and weathering of rock also contribute. Ex. atmosphere.
What is found in the abiotic reservoir soil? In the atmosphere?
nitrogen and phosphorus. Only nitrogen.
Steps in the biogeochemical cycles (note that this is not linear, see diagram in 37.18): 1?
producers incorporate chemicals from the abiotic reservoirs into organic compounds. They synthesize the raw materials into new organic molecules, such as carbohydrates and proteins.
Steps in the biogeochemical cycles: 2?
Consumers feed on the producers, incorporating some of the chemicals into their own bodies.
Steps in the biogeochemical cycles: 3?
Both producers and consumers release some chemicals back to the environment in waste products (CO2 and nitrogenous wastes of animals).
Steps in the biogeochemical cycles: 4?
Decomposers play a central role by breaking down the complex organic molecules into detritus such as plant litter, animals wastes and dead organisms.
The process of decomposition is also called…
metabolism
What inorganic compounds does metabolism produce?
nitrates (NO3 -), phosphates (PO4 3-) and CO2
