Unit 2: The Ecosystem Concept

• Ecosystem

  • basic unit of ecology
  • made up of interdependent subsystem
  • consists of biotic community + abiotic components of the environment
• Habitat

  • physical environment to which an organism as become adapted and survives in.
• • Macrohabitat – overall habitat of a community
  • Microhabitat –portion of the habitat directly encountered by a population of a given species
• • Temporal – components related to daily and seasonal characteristics
• Spatial – geographical components

  • Locality, topography, major political units

  Topography – description of the spatial arrangement of the habitat surface

  • Elevation, slope, curvature
• Physical-chemical

  • Atmosphere - air
  • Lithosphere - substrate
  • Hydrosphere - aquatic
• Biosphere – life-supporting layer of Earth

  Biotic factors – all living organisms in a biosphere
• Asthenosphere – plastic region of the mantle

  Lithosphere – earth’s crust and upper mantle

  Hydrosphere – consists of earth’s liquid water (surface & underground), ice and water vapor
• • TROPOSPHERE –where most weather events occur
  • STRATOSPHERE – where ozone layer is found
  • MESOSPHERE –where most meteorites burn up
  • THERMOSPHERE – region of highly-ionized gases