Ecosystem Dynamics

• Studies focus on people and the Earth’s ecosystems
• Goal is for students to take action to help sustain, conserve, and maintain environmental health
• Topics will include renewable and non-renewable resources and human impact

Module 1: People and the Ecosystems

• Introduces environmental problems created by humans and ways to address them
• Examines natural ecosystem attributes and changes resulting from human and natural activities
• Students should be able to describe the three most important factors in determining human impact on the environment
• Students should be able to describe the basic principles and concepts of ecology
• Students should be able to examine the attributes of a natural ecosystem

Lesson 1: Environmental Challenges

• Relates human population size to natural resources and consumption resources
• Goal is to distinguish between overpopulation and consumption overpopulation
• Students should be able to describe 3 factors most important in determining human impact
• Students should be able to define environmental sustainability
• Students should be able to identify human behaviors that threaten environmental sustainability
• Humans are the most powerful environmental change agent
• Humans transform forests, prairies, and deserts for needs and desires
• Humans consume increasing amounts of limited resources, i.e. topsoil, water and breathable air
• Human-induced-climate change is a risk to the natural world

Earth's Central Environmental Problem

• The environment stems from the number of people which continues to grow
• In 2009, there were 6.8 billion people on Earth
• Population continues to grow at a vast rate
• 1960 had 3 Billion, 1975 had 4 Billion, 1987 had 5 billion
• The human population consumes vast quantities of water and food
• The human population uses a great deal of energy and raw materials
• The human population produces much waste
• Nearly 1 in 4 people globally lives in extreme poverty
• Poverty means people can't meet basic needs; food, clothing, shelter, education or health
• It is unknown if the Earth can sustain this amount of people forever
• It's humanity's task to seek to feed a global population
• Quality of life for future generations depends on an established sustainable agricultural system to feed the world

Rich and Poor Countries

• Rich countries are known as highly developed; Norway, Switzerland, Qatar, USA, Canada and Japan.
• Complex industrialized bases, low population growth and incomes make a country highly developed
• 82% of the world's population lives in poor countries in two subcategories: moderately and less developed
• Moderately developed countries: medium industrialization and per person income lower than highly developed: Turkey, South Africa, Thailand and Mexico.
• Fewer opportunities for income, education and health care are characteristics of moderately developed countries
• Less developed countries have low levels of industrialization, high population growth and infant mortality rates, and low per person income: Philippines, Bangladesh, Haiti and Laos
• Highly developed countries' citizens consume more resources than developing countries' citizens
• High resource use impacts the ecosystem at least as much as population boom in other areas
• Quantity of resources vital to an individual's survival is small
• Rapid population growth, often in developing countries, can overwhelm & deplete Earth's resources.
• Highly developed nations have demands greater than requirements for survival
• Rich countries deplete resources and degrade enviornments by consuming nonessential items like televisions and jet skis
• Nonrenewable resources have limited supplies: minerals and fossil fuels.
• Renewable resources include trees, fishes, and fresh water: can be replaced by natural processes, can be used forever if not over exploited in the short term
• Rapid population growth can cause renewable resources to be overexploited
• Poor people must grow crops on unsuitable land.
• Population growth impacts are critical in developing countries.
• Developing countries can exploit resources to export to highly developed countries
• Poverty affects population pressures on natural resources and enviornment

Population Size and Resource Consumption

• A country is overpopulated if resource demand leads to environmental damage.
• Too many people living in one area cause people overpopulation
• Consumption overpopulation = each person consumes too great a share of resources
• Highly developed nations consume over 1/2 of the world's resources with less than 20% of the population
• Highly developed nations generate 75% of the world's waste & pollution
• Ecological footprint measures productive land, freshwater, and ocean to supply each person with food, water, shelter, energy, clothing and waste.
• Humans use three factors to determine environmental impact:
  • Number of people (P) affluence per person (A)
  • Consumption or amount of resources used per person
  • Environmental effects, technology used to obtain and consume resources

The IPAT Equation

• A classic attempt to explain the relationship between a human population and its impact on the environment
• I=P x A x T
• Consumption of a particular resource can increase, but the environmental impact of increased consumption may decrease due to technological advances
• Sustainability is ensured if the ecosystem can function indefinitely without burdening natural systems.
• Environmental sustainability is the ability to meet current needs without compromising future needs

This is based on the following ideas:

• Effects of actions on the natural environment must be considered
• Resources are not unlimited, living within limits lets renewable resources regenerate
• Environmental and social costs to the products we consume must be recognized
• We must each share responsibility for sustainability.

Lesson 2: How Ecosystems Work

• Define ecology
• Distinguish among the following ecological levels; population, community, ecosystem, landscape, and the biosphere
• Summarize how energy flows through a food web
• Describe the carbon, hydrologic, nitrogen, sulfur, and phosphorus cycles
• Describe the contributing factors to an organisms ecological niche
• Describe interspecific relationships among organisms
• Discuss keystone species examples

Definition of Ecology

• Derived from the Greek words oikos and logos
• Literally means the study of household
• Scientific definition is study of environmental house, including organisms and functional processes
• The study of "life at home" emphasizes relations between organisms and their environment Basic Principles and Concepts of Ecology

Levels of Organization

• Range from the ecosphere to cells, showing each level manifests properties
• Hierarchy is arrangement into a graded series, while a system consists of interdependent components forming a unified whole
• A bio system is a is system that constitutes living and non-living components ranging from genetics to ecological systems

Ecology

• Is concerned with system lvls beyond that of the organisms
• A population is a group of the same species occupying a common geographical area
• A community is composed of two or more different species populations occupying the same area
• A community includes only biotic factors
• An ecosystem is a community plus abiotic factors
• A landscape is a heterogenous area composed of similar clusters of interacting ecosystems
• A watershed is a landscape level convenient way to study management with natural boundaries
• Watersheds allow rain to be caught and drained to a water body
• Biome is a term pertaining to a large regional system characterized by vegetation or landscape
• An example of a biome is a tropical rainforest
• A region describes a geological or political area containing more than one biome
• The ecosphere contains all earth's organisms interacting to maintain a self-adjusting state

Concepts of Natural Ecosystems

• Biotic living organisms and abiotic nonliving ecosystems are interrelated and interact with each other
• An ecosystem is a unit that includes a biotic community in a given area interacting with the physical environment with a flow of energy
• The ecosystem is the first in the ecological hierarchy to include all the components important for survival
• Ecosystems are open, things are constantly leaving and entering

Ecosystem Graphic Model

• Model consists of a box representing interest area with input output environments as circles
• Energy is a vital input, sunlight is the ultimate energy source
• Wind, rain, and water flow are other sources
• Energy flows out in heat or transformed/processed forms like waste and pollutants
• Life necessities and materials regularly enter/leave ecosystems and organisms immigrate or emigrate
• Functional diagram include storage autotrophs, heterotrophs nutrients cycling and immigration/emigration
• 2 Ecosystem layers: Autotrophic Stratum and Heterotrophic Stratum

Components of an ecosystem are:

• Organic/ material cycles involved in water, carbon, nitrogen
• Organic compounds connecting biotic and abiotic components, i.e. proteins and lipids
• Air water and substrate, climate and physical factors, and producers, mostly green plants
• Heterotrophic organisms consume/ingest particulate organic matter
• Saprotrophs, decomposers-bacteria and fungi-get energy by breaking down matter from dead animals and plants

Example of Ecosytems: A pond and an old field

• Plants, animals, microorganisms change the water chemical nature
• A water bottle and scoop of bottom mud is a mix of living organisms with compounds
• Abiotic Substances = inorganic and organic such as water, carbon, nitrogen
• Organisms have a small portion of nutrients that can immediately be used, much is held in reserve inside them

Key Ecosystem Regulation Factors:

• Rate of nutrient release from solids
• Solar input
• Changes in day length
• Producers mostly large floating plants growing in shallow water and minute floating plants that grow in phytoplankton that distribute throughout the pond

Consumer Organisms

• Herbivores, primary macroconsumers, Primary Consumers are zooplankton and benthos
• Secondary consumers or carnivores are predaceous insects, birds, and mammals that feed on consumers
• Detritivores live on organic detritus from autotrophic layers up top while providing food for carnivores.

Decomposer Organisms

• Non- green bateria flagellates and fungi are distributed in the ecosystem
• Greatest abundance is in the mud-water interface+
• Stages of decomposing occur rapidly when temperature and moisture is good
• Action breaks apart decaying organisms and then release minerals and other substances.
• Energy can be transformed to another form, light can be transformed, but it's not destroyed
• Organisms, ecosystems + ecosphere possess the same essential thermodynamic quality; the can maintain order or low entropy

Organisms Can Create and Maintain

• Low entropy achieved b efficiently dissipating energy of high utility into low utility sources, light and food into heat
• Food and photosynthesis of green plants represents the potential energy for the utilization of organisms
• Types of energy are = with each other in quantity but not quality and can calculate based on it's transformation
• Energy gets converted from higher state into low state

Energy Partitioning in Food Chains and Food Webs

• Transfer of energy is autotrophs from organisms that eat and are eaten creating "food chains"
• a proportion, typically up to 90%, from each organism lost as heat
• With each of the species transferred there is always energy becoming available so the population can thrive.
• Food chains are grazing or detrius. Food chains Interlock, interlocking spoken of as a food web
• Bottom-up factors regulate upstream factors such as nutrients
• Top-down factors are the predator/grazers

Biogeochemical Cycles

• Includes essential elements of life
• They circulate atmosphere to environment.
• Known as biogoechemical cycles.

Nitrogen Cycling

• accounts for 80% of Earth's atmosphere + is ecosystem limit resource because cannot be gassed
• For generation: N2 transformed into a different chemical type through nitrogen fixation
• Nitrogen species are symbiotic, require interaction with the ecosystem
• Induction of absorption into roots + activation cycle allow for nodule formation.
• Bacteria are usually aerobic or anaerobic depending on chemotrophic/phototrophic properties and are still able to perform nitrogen fixation.
• There’s distinct nitrification steps that have different microorganisms
• There is oxidation -performed by nitrite oxidizing bacteria

There are some more key factors for cycling:

• New type ammonia oxidation can cause anoxic conditions by using ammonia to oxide nitrite and release gaseous nitrogen Denitrification - Nitrogen converted to gas that eliminates/returns nitrogen

Cycling of Phosphorus

• The cycle depends on surface water, oceans + rocks
• Known as open for tendencies of minerals from land to ocean and is referred to sedimentary.
• Atoms in the earth's community can join centuries until taken up by the groundwater stream

Cycling of Surfur

• Natural processes that occur release surfer include,
• Dimethylsulfide formation,
• Anerobic by Sulfate-reducing bacteria
• Volcanic activity

Cycling of Carbon

• Carbon can join animal skeletons and organisms alike.
• Can be part of sedimentary rock if organisms all die and stay under.
• As part of natural gas and fossil feuls it won't be taken into the rest of the system soon.
• It can be lost in the form of CO2
• Oceans and bodies of water can absorb CO2 from the surface

Hydrologic Cycle

• Easy to Understand.
• The sunlight makes water evaporate over atmosphere
• Main source depends on ocean
• Water in the atmosphere is distributed in rain, snow
• Carbon dioxide increases in atmosphere

Factors that Contribute to an Organism's Ecological Niche

• Some enivornments are too cold, saline, or warm but each tolerates the world on its own.
• Niche: influences the limited rate of organisms intake.
• The environmental limit species are related to ecological niche as it summarizes how that species reacts to the environment.
• The niches are affected by their abiotic factor as high as their ecological influence

Factors That Determine Population Numbers

• One factor, limiting factors is important by regulating one certain growth.
• Too little +too much can prevent growth.
• Principle for sustainability is what achieves/ controls this.

Limits of Tolerance

• Organism minimum / maximum represent limit tolerances.
• Living things act and depend on conditions to survive.
• The laws of Tolerance is something that says organisms need a balance factor on everything to survive:

Laws of Tolerance

• Organism minimum / maximum represent limit tolerances.
• Living things act and depend on conditions to survive.
• The laws of Tolerance is something that says organisms need a balance factor on everything to survive:
  • A larger tolerance means that is more sustainable in the long run.
  • Nature doesn't give you the actual factors.
  • Reproduction is likely affected due to limits that cause ecological stress.
• On land, rain is the factor as not available, so soil is a limiting factor

Temperature Regulation

• Most of the planet is limited based on the sun + what type of atmosphere they have.
• Not constant, depressed
• Limited by the factors but also based on exposure and ability.

Water

• High concentrations cause water loss from the organisms.
• Rain and how water can be supplied are also an important measure.

Humidity

• Factors,
  • Amount of vapor
  • Variation
  • Light
• Humidity can limit distribution based its daily balance with everything

Two species and the Interaction They Have.

• Interact in combinations of neutral, positive, negative that can be symbolized

Categories

• Neutral
• Competiton; with interference and resource
• Amensalism
• Mutualism

Lesson 3: The Ecosystems

• Define biome and discuss how biomes are related to climate.
• Briefly describe the nine major terrestrial biomes, giving attention to the climate, soil, and characteristic organisms of each.
• Summarize the important environmental factors that affect aquatic ecosystems.
• Describe the various aquatic ecosystems, giving attention to the environmental characteristics of each.
• Describe and distinguish among the main ocean life zones.

Biome

• Land region that similar plants and cliamte factors weather or not occur.
• Temperature +precipiation are what causes the main distribution
• Land biomes are,
  • Tundra
  • Desert
  • Rain Forrest
  • Savanna

Tundra

• High, covered with mosses + lichens.
• Has harsh, cold winters with short summers.
• Summers give sunlight more days for growing.
• Nutritents dont grow because have little detritus.
• Permaforst Impedes drainage and exploration.
• Low exploration leads disturbance on the environment
• Flora include the Bearberry and Tea Fauna that is used by lemmings.

Boreal Forest

• Coniferus forest with pine fir, spruce found south of the tundra.
• Acidic minerals
• Water that is deep from permafrost
• Worlds top source of industrial fiber.
• Flora White spruce with cone-bearing

Temperare Rain Forest

• Conferious with weather
• High precipitation over the summer and winter
• Relatively poor nutrients
• Wood producer.
• Dominated by long green trees and plants.

Temperate Deciduous Forest

• Where the weather is more in temperate regions
• More soil and clear lower layer.
• First used with agricultural
• Leaved hardwood trees
• Forest are where small organisms live with small plants.

Tropical Rainforest

• Climate is warm + has moist the entire year with species weather.
• Found in southeast Asia
• occurs with with minerals with soil weather.
• Flora Bromeliad not long dominant
• Fauna: 90 percent adapts.

Chaparral

• Mild but moisture
• Small leaves and shrubs.
• Flora consist of scrubs
• Fauna: Deer and mule wood

Temperate Grassland

• Cold weather + less rain + temperate,
• Soil is organic
• Many midwestern states
• Wildfires Maintain grasses Fauna: pronghorn

Savanna

• High Rainfall that has scattered trees.
• Temps stay with similar range all year the long
• Limited essential minerls.
• Nutrients minerals leach during rain
• In Africa+ Australia converted domestication.
• Flora: acaia, has with long expansis.
• Fauna , like the wildebeast are in the African regions.

Desert

• Precipitation Limits the water on the the soil
• Atmosphere will vary from both weather
• Plants adapt by being small Flora include the the sagebrush from the fauna. Aquatic systems

Most Important Division is:

• Division between
• Salinity
• Dissolved oxygen
• Marine minerals

Explore the roles of saprotrophs, phytoplankton, and abiotic factors in ecosystems. Understand nutrient storage, trophic relationships, and ecosystem regulation. Learn about biomes, ecospheres, and the open nature of ecosystems.