Unit 3 Ecology

• Supporting Services - Primary production necessary for producing necessary for producing ecosystem services like nutrient cycling
• Provisioning Services - includes ecosystem goods that are directly consumed by people, including food, fresh water, and fiber
• Regulating Services include benefits derived from the regulation of ecosystem processes, including water purification, flood control, disease regulation, and crop pollination
• Cultural Services include nonmaterial spiritual, aesthetic, cultural, and recreational benefits people gain from ecosystems
• One Health Paradigm is the people who protect human, animal, and environmental health to maintain balance and optimize the health of others
• Ecology is a quantitative science that measures a species and the movement of matter and energy as an ecosystem changes
• Ecology and evolution is unified by the idea that adaptation by natural selection helps us understand the interactions of organisms with each other and the environment across space and time.
• The tilt of the earth creates a variable climate, day length, and seasonality
• No tilt in a planet creates a consistent climate, day length, and seasonality
• Solar Radiation + Tilt + Orbital motion = Seasons
• Warm air rises while cool air falls. Air's ability to hold moisture increases with warmer temperatures. Warm/dry air absorbs moisture from the environment
• Insolation: solar radiation received by the Earth's atmosphere, or at its surface

  Higher latitudes receive slanting rays and more diffuse energy (cooler)

  Lower latitudes, near the equator, have more concentrated Sun rays (hotter)
• Label the Following

  A) Warm, dry air

  B) Warm, moist air

  C) Cool, moist air

  D) Cool, dry air

  E) Cool, dry air

  F) Warm, dry air

  
• Hadley Cells are mostly found in the equator where low pressure is present and 30 degrees N and 30 degrees S
• Biomes are determined by climate factors (temperature and precipitation) and Physical factors (topography and latitude)
• Label the following

  A) Producers

  B) Inorganic Nutrient Pool

  C) Decomposers

  D) Consumers

  
• This figure shows that Respiration = GPP - NPP

  
• Net Primary Production is the energy available to consumers (biomass) whereas gross primary production is the energy available to primary producers (captured through photosynthesis)
• Plants grow from small seeds to large plants with larger amounts of tissue since they absorb material from the air that they incorporate into new molecules in their tissue
• Over a day length, Carbon dioxide increases as sunlight decreases, but lowers once sunlight increases
• Carbon dioxide enters through burning fossil fuels, deforestation, and cellular respiration and exits through photosynthesis and the ocean absorbing it; spatial variation is present in the northern and southern hemisphere
• CO2 concentrations are the highest in the northern hemisphere during the winter months (no sunlight) because of more cellular respiration, whereas it is lowest in the summer (more sunlight) because of photosynthesis
• CO2 concentrations are the least variable in Antarctica because there is a lower human density, covered in snow, and fewer plants
• Energy is lost in the transfer of from one level to another, so there is successively less total energy as you move up trophic levels. 90% of the energy is lost and only 10% is available for growth and reproduction which is not enough to support a large population
• Trophic efficiency is the production of a trophic level relative to the one below it (expressed as a percentage/ratio)
• Energy available at level n = NPP x Efficiency^n-1
• A Sankey Diagram is a diagram that shows the flow of energy through a system; Primary Producers (high) to Consumers (low)
• Biomass is inverted to energy because it measures consumption so the top has the highest number of consumers
• Open oceans, like deserts, are nutrient-limited with phytoplankton having a high growth rate and shorter lifespan. They have a higher number of primary producers but lower biomass
• label the following

  A) Inorganic Nutrient Pool

  B) consumers

  C) energy

  D) nutrients

  
• Some questions ecologists ask about nutrient cycling include: do ecosystems differ in nutrient availability and how do nutrients connect to each other
• Nitrogen Fixation transfroms atmospheric nitrogen to inorganic nitrogen and is done by bacteria (microbes) (atmosphere to plants)
• Uptake is done by plants and transforms inorganic nitrogen to organic nitrogen (atmosphere to plants)
• Mineralization or decay is done by microbes and creates ammonium (plants to soil)
• Nitrification is done by microbes and transforms ammonium nitrate into nitrate (plants to soil); if there is excess ammonia
• Denitrification is done by bacteria (microbes) and transforms nitrate into gaseous nitrogen (soil to atmosphere)
• Wetlands retain nutrients needed for plants so implanting these in between production sites and lakes can prevent runoff
• Ecologists are interested in the movement of matter and energy through communities and ecosystems and the abundance (populations) and distribution (range) of organisms (biodiversity) in the context of the environment
• excess nitrogen would affect vegetation taking away the oxygen and other chemical elements needed for growth
• In the optimum zone, reproduction and growth normally take place here. Survival happens across the graph