APES Unit 1: Ecosystems

• Biomes: by climate, biomass, temperature, precipitation, plants, animals
• Biodiversity: organism variety, habitat loss= loss of biodiversity
• Genetic variety: gene variety in a species
• Ecosystem: location with abiotic and biotic factors (all ecosystems are called the biosphere)
• Organism - population - community - ecosystem - biome - biosphere
• Competition: when organisms share a limited resource

  • results in resource partitioning or extinction
• Keystone: unproportional effect on the ecosystem, necessary to keep in balance (ex: sea stars, sea otters)
• Trophic levels: distribution of energy, 10% rule

  Producer - Primary Consumer - Secondary Consumer - Tertiary Consumer
• Wetlands: an area covered in water, reduce erosion, storm surge protection, habitat, remove excess nitrogen, being disturbed by agriculture, fishing, development, recreation, invasive species, carbon sink, groundwater recharge
• PES: Payment for ecosystem services, financial incentives to landowners to maintain and enhance environmental quality
• Tundra: cold, dry, snow moisture, moss and lichen, permafrost (frozen soil with methane)
• Taiga: coniferous forest, long winter short summer, dense canopy
• Temperate Rainforest: moderate temp, precipitation, low nutrients and species diversity
• Woodlands: weather extremes (droughts, fires)
• Tropical Rainforest: warm, wet, near equator, low nutrients, humid, most productive and diverse
• Savannah: hot, dry, low vegitation, rich soil
• Subtropical Desert: dry, cactus
• Riparian ecosystem: ecosystem at the banks of rivers, protect from erosion
• Stream: fast water, high oxygen, low plant life
• Lake: littoral zone, limnetic, benthic
• Saltwater Marsh: estuaries, prevent against floods and erosion
• Mangrove: preserve ecosystem, habitat, against erosion storm surge protection, stabilize coastlines
• Intertidal zone: adaptive organisms, high and low tide, changes in salt and salinity
• Coral Reef: polyps inside create hard outer skeleton with calcium carbonate, diverse habitat, coral bleaching (CO2 traps heat and removes zooxanthellae symbiote with stress, coral dies with no productivity)
• Ocean Acidification:

  • CO2 + H20= H2CO3-
  • H2CO3- = H+ + HCO3-
  • H+ drops pH and HCO3- reduces availability of calcium carbonate
• Ocean: carbon sink with aquatic plants taking it in to perform photosynthesis, reacting with compounds to make sedimentary rocks

  • photic: sunlight
  • benthic: bottom
  • neritic: end of continental shelf
  • littoral: shore
• Eutrophication: bodies of water high in nutrient concentration such as nitrogen and phosphorus, algal blooms, from runoff (fertilizer), worst one in the Gulf of Mexico
• Carbon cycle: movement of carbon through the atmosphere, ocean, and land (fast=living, slow=dead)

  • Note photosynthesis, decomposition into gases like methane by bacteria
• Carbon sink: natural/artificial reservoir to store CO2 and mitigate climate change, less carbon sinks with deforestation, trapped in ice caps or limestone rocks
• Limiting factor: restrict population growth, density independent or density dependent
• Ocean Circulation: ocean heats at the poles

  • Convection: warm air and liquid rises while cold sinks
  • Deep water, density driven currents
  • Conveyer belt of current driven by wind
• Nitrogen: atmospheric nitrogen has no use

  • Sources: fossil fuels, fertilier, runoff: cause eutrophication
  • N2 into NH4 with nitrogen fixing bacteria in legumes and soil
  • NH4 into NO2- with nitrifying bacteria performing nitrification
  • Nitrifying bacteria turn NO2- into NO3-
  • Plants assimilate nitrates (or denitrifying bacteria turns it back into atmospheric nitrogen)
  • They decompose and ammonification turns it into NH4
• Phosphorus Cycle: need for DNA/RNA backbone, rocks, phosphates, fertilizer, runoff, waste: mining, eutrophication, no gas phase

  • Rocks get uplifted and weathered
  • The phosphate in the rock becomes phosphate in soil which gets taken in by plants
  • Organic phosphates taken in by animals
  • Waste decomposed by soil detrivores and becomes phosphate in soil again
  • Phosphates in solution solidify to solid phosphate and then rock
• Water Cycle: 97% ocean, sea evaporation prevents Earth from heating, 3% freshwater (2% in glaciers)

  • Ocean/lakes evaporate and condenses into precpitation
  • Soil moisture evaporate or trees transpire
  • Soil moisture can infiltrate the groundwater flow
  • Ice and snow sublimate into condensation and then precipate (or melt down as runoff)
• Water:

  • Properties: high specific heat, capillary action, polarity
  • Aquifer: freshwater to support well
  • Recharge zone: surface area giving water to aquifer
  • Water Table: level below ground with saturated water
  • Unsaturated zone: open spaces with water
• Aquifer depletion: sustained groundwater pumping drops the water table

  • Effects: more energy, land subsidence, water shortage, saltwater intrusion
• Equation: NPP= GPP - R

  NPP: remaining net chemical energy

  R: respiration rate

  GPP: rate at which plants fix given chemical energy (total)