Unit A Flashcards
What is the 1st law of thermodynamics?
Energy is neither created nor destroyed, only transferred
What is the 2nd law of thermodynamics?
As energy transfers, it loses thermal energy to surroundings
What is the difference between an autotroph and a heterotroph?
Autotrophs produce their own food while heterotrophs consume the food made by autotrophs
What is an autotroph?
“Self feeders” produce energy from nutrients and energy (producers)
What is a heterotroph?
“Other feeders” primary consumers that consume organic molecules from other organisms (consumers)
What are the 2 types of autotrophs?
- Photosynthetic: Use light energy to synthesize sugars from CO2
- Chemosynthetic: Use energy releases by chemical reactions to make sugars
What are the 3 types of heterotrophs?
- Herbivore (primary consumer, plants)
- Omnivore (secondary consumer, plants and animals)
- Carnivore (secondary or tertiary consumer, animals)
- Decomposer (not on any trophic level, break down dead or decaying matter)
What is the difference between a food chain and a food web?
Food chains describe the specific order that energy goes in, food webs describe the energy and the complexity of an ecosystem
How much energy is transferred across each trophic level? Where does the rest go?
10%. The rest of the energy is either lost through thermal energy, incomplete digestion, and/or not all matter being consumed
What is an energy pyramid?
Measures the amount of energy at each trophic level. Bottom is always the largest for this one.
What is a number pyramid?
Measure the number of organisms at each trophic level.
What is a biomass pyramid?
Measures the amount of biomass of the organisms at each trophic level.
What is the biosphere?
Area where living things are found
What are the 3 parts of the biosphere?
- Atmosphere
- Lithosphere
- Hydrosphere
What is biodiversity?
of different species in an ecosystem
What is an ecosystem?
Has both biotic and abiotic factors
What is the Carbon Cycle? (Closely related to the oxygen cycle due to photosynthesis and cellular respiration being complementary processes)
CO2 in the atmosphere gets used in photosynthesis, organisms breathe in O2 made by plants and either return carbon into the air through cellular respiration or die which causes carbon to be compacted over geological time to be burned as fossil fuels, putting CO2 back into the atmosphere
What is nitrogen fixation?
2 process in which atmospheric or dissolved nitrogen is converted into nitrate ions
What is denitrification?
Nitrogen gets put back into the atmosphere.
Nitrates -> nitrites -> nitrogen gas
What is the nitrogen cycle?
Nitrogen from the atmosphere (N2) is fixed into nitrate ions which is absorbed by plants and animals and can either be decomposed back into ammonia and ammonium or go through denitrification into the atmosphere.
What can help the nitrogen cycle?
Lightning causes nitrogen and oxygen to combine which is good for the soil
What is the phosphorus cycle?
Phosphate in rocks and fossils get weathered and dissolved into inorganic phosphate which is consumed by plants and animals and gets decomposed. Animal wastes, bones, and teeth form ocean sediments along with runoff from dissolved inorganic phosphate and returns through geological uplift.
Where does the phosphorus cycle occur?
In the lithosphere and hydrosphere, NOT the atmosphere
What is geological uplift?
An increase in the vertical elevation of the Earth’s surface in response to natural causes.
