Factors Influencing Ecosystems

Ecosystem Factors

• Deserts, tropical rainforests, and tundras exhibit distinct differences in solar flux, temperature, and precipitation patterns.

Chemical Factors

• Availability of essential nutrients like carbon, nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium, hydrogen, oxygen, and sulfur affects ecosystem functioning.
• Level of toxic substances, salts causing salinity, and organic substances in soil or water also influence ecosystem functioning.

Climatic Factors

• Temperature, light, relative humidity, precipitation, and wind influence the climate of a region and are important abiotic factors.
• Light and temperature affect basic metabolic processes of plants like photosynthesis, seed germination, flowering, and fruiting.
• Different plants adapt to different light conditions, such as heliophytes (full sunlight) and sciophytes (shade or diffused sunlight).
• Photoperiodism (duration of day and night) affects plants and animals, particularly in reproductive stages.
• Temperature affects plant and animal growth and development, with extreme temperatures leading to freezing or thermal injury.
• Precipitation patterns and magnitude determine the type of vegetation and distribution of animal species in an area.

Topographic Factors

• Physical geography of an area influences flora and fauna through indirect climatic factors.
• Altitude, latitude, and longitude affect temperature, pressure, wind velocity, solar intensity, and humidity.
• Steepness of slope influences water flow, soil erosion, siltation, wind speed, and other factors.
• Windward and leeward sides of a mountain affect rainfall in the region.

Edaphic Factors

• Soil is a complex matrix consisting of weathered rock material, organic matter, inorganic gases, minerals, and soil biota.
• Soil characteristics like texture, pH, porosity, water, salinity, organic matter, and mineral matter influence plant and animal life.
• Different ecological groups of plants have evolved with distinct adaptive features on different types of soils.
• Examples of adapted plants include halophytes (saline soils), oxalophytes (acidic soils), psammophytes (sands), lithophytes (rocks), and calcicoles (calcareous soils).