Biosphere and Ecosystems: Key Concepts and Interactions
Biosphere and Ecosystems: Key Concepts
Biosphere: The system that makes up all living things on Earth.
Ecosystems: Physical environments, and the case of a complex system of relations between them.
Biotope: Non-living components of the ecosystem (abiotic factors, the environment, substrate).
Biocenosis: A part of the ecosystem of life (all of its creatures).
Biotic factors: Interactions between living beings.
Abiotic factors: A set of physical and chemical variables.
Population: Time and place of certain species of the same set of creatures.
Habitat: A population living in the place.
Community: The population of a set of specific time and place.
Ecological niche: The role of a species in an ecosystem.
Trophic relationships: A mechanism for transferring power between beings through food.
Trophic level: How to get food by the body in the trophic network of each level (producer, consumer, sub-levels).
Food chains: In the ecosystem, food-body relations, organized by series.
Trophic network: Two or more trophic channels crossing the network created by the body.
Ecological Succession
Ecological succession: A dynamic process, the interaction between abiotic and biotic factors, creating a complex ecosystem and creating a more stable one.
Recycling of Matter
Recycling of matter: Inorganic soil organic matter decomposes, so the manufacturers use it again. Biodegradable organic matter can be decomposed. Recycling of waste material is done by decomposers: Heterotrophic decomposers: Saprotrophic beings (earth: bacteria, fungi; water: bacteria); Mineralizers: Chemosynthetic decomposers (autotrophs), mineral salts environment. Closed cycle of matter, some food away from their places of origin or by lixiviation or gasification. Some are buried without oxygen, turning organic waste matter into coal and oil without recycling.
Biomass and Production
Biomass: An ecosystem trophic level or the amount of organic matter, mass (g C) and energy (kcal) units, the majority of the surface or volume (g C / m2, g C / m3).
Production: Biomass produced in a time (g C / m2 per day, kcal / ha / year); indicates the amount of energy flow in trophic levels.
Primary production: Energy established by autotrophs.
Secondary production: The corresponding energy of heterotrophs.
Gross production (Pgross): A fixed unit of time, energy, producer: through photosynthesis by organic matter, consumers of organic matter in the assimilated.
Net production (Pnet): Can transfer energy to the next level by trophic level, used less in respiration (Pnet = Pgross – R)
Productivity / restoration rate: Biomass production and the net ratio (Pnet / B), the renewal rate of biomass.
Renewal time: The time to renovate the ecosystem trophic level (B / Pnet), per unit time.
Efficiency: The level of profitability that trophic or ecosystem level and inform the energy assimilated by the previous trophic level; producer: Pgross / solar radiation, the consumer: Pgross / Pnet of the previous category, in %.
Ecological Pyramids
Ecological pyramid: A community with an ecological pyramid structure in trophic graphics mode. Organisms that produce the next level of primary energy supply, increase energy levels and the amount of life can lower the appearance of a pyramid structure. Decomposers do not appear, almost impossible to calculate biomass. Thus, the pyramids have limited use.
Limiting Factors of Primary Production
Temperature and humidity: In continental regions, photosynthetic activity increases. If the temperature increases significantly, enzymes denature, and primary production declines violently.
Lack of food: For organic molecules biosynthesis, limiting factors may be nitrogen and phosphorus. Food hampers the recycling of organic matter production and decomposition of the increased distance between the places. In the oceans, most of the organic matter synthesized in the photic zone is decomposed in the oceanic background, a large distance to food recovery is more difficult, limiting the primary production.
Light: In ecosystems, a limited amount of deep-water creatures that we find are photosynthetic. The difference in light (photic zone) depends on depth, latitude, season, stream, and according to the characteristics of the water.
Self-Regulation of Populations
The growth of the population: The number of individuals per unit area is the size of the population, changing over time. Factors: Birth-rate: the number of births per unit time of a population; Death-rate: the number of deaths per unit time of a population; Emigration-rate: the number of individuals who came together and left the population; Immigration-rates: from native populations of other introduced the number of individuals; Rate of growth (r): a unit of time occurred in the fall or increase in the number of individuals, without migration r = birth rate – death rate. Biotic potential, r the maximum value (maximum births and deaths when the minimum).
Growth Curves and Strategies for Living
K-strategist (S-shaped growth curve): Slow development, low levels of reproduction, the body structure of a larger organized and more persistent species, previously inhabited competitive areas, strategies to reduce the number of deaths in developing defenses to predators, places and ecosystems adapt to a very stable support to maintain a level close to the maximum number of individuals.
R-strategist (J-shaped growth curve): The first use of environmental resources faster than anyone breeding species, colonized the empty space (forests ravaged, burned fields, new islands emerge), a high level of reproduction to survive, adapt to the disability involves the loss of many, a pioneer in, opportunistic.
Ecological valence: Abiotic, a factor in the tolerance of a species range. Euroic (The general, for strategist): field tolerance to a wide range of factors, low requirements. Stenoic (specialists, strategists s): a factor in areas of close tolerance, high demands.
Intraspecific Relationships
Colonies: Through budding (from other individuals linked to the mother physically) by the permanent association of individuals (corals, certain algae). Families: one or both parents and descendants, offspring, breeding and feeding purposes. Combination group: individuals with a specific purpose at a meeting in the ephemeral. Societies: Individuals in castes, according to physiological and morphological characteristics (insects: bees, ants).
The Loss of Biodiversity
Pollution: Pesticides, fertilizers, waste disposal (hunting: lead in the environment due to pellets, damage to large raptors).
Ecosystem fragmentation and destruction: Agriculture, industry, urban development creates deforestation, new territory for agricultural buildings and transport routes.
Direct exploitation of species: Species-specific about excessive hunting pressure. Massive fishing. Collections. Pets. Profitable choice of the human species.
Invasive species into the ecosystem: Elimination of competing species, outsiders or their inhabitants have eaten (in the case of parasites, they cause illness). Beings and the decrease in the loss of ecosystem unstable. Accidentally transported or deliberate human species: 1- XVI, XVII, XVIII centuries, medicinal plants and other plants for food. 2- Like pets. 3- Trade and transport routes between the United Nations Development increased the introduction of foreign species. 4- Accidentally created a problem: a species of algae from the Pacific in the Mediterranean, Monaco aquarium a clean boot, quickly developed. Mediterranean species produce deadly substances, not eating. Instead, self-feeding species, accelerating the disappearance of them.
Ecological Succession
Ecological succession: The ecosystem and its components change in time and space (ecological succession): biomass increased continuously, until the balance of production and the first breath, then very little change from the ecosystem. First opportunistic species (r strategists): reproduction is fast, easy to fill in empty spaces, well-adapted to changing conditions, little other species (k strategists): a lower level of development, slower reproduction, more structured, more durable, but the other species. Continued until a stable and complex ecosystem (climax equilibrium state), an important event occurred until a constant (fires, floods, climate change), which then repeat the process of species replacement and re-balance situation.
Soils of the Basque Country
Soil is the interface between minerals and living beings, a thin layer of topsoil and the dynamic, minerals, organic matter, water, air and living merchandise. Participate in the formation of: the mother-rock weathering, climate, waste decomposition, living. Process: the mother of the weathering of stone-cracked, thin layer of soil to plant the first set, the roots of plants and other beings contribute to the actions of soil, soil depth and to get the trees growing there. An essential element to humans, several large food and raw materials, the housing and construction industries. Theoretically renewable, and the formation of a large imbalance between degradation, in practice non-renewable. A (humus), B (top of cations), C (stone eroded from the mother), D (the mother rock) horizon (horizontal layers) organized a set of profiles.
Basque Country Soil Types
Non-horizon soil environment variable or newly created (the edge of the river alluvial soils, beaches), A, B, bare soil without horizon, lithosol. -A / C profiled the ground: the young, the mother of acid-rock: ranker, neutral or basic: rendzina. -A / (B) / C profiled soil B horizon of a small, older than before, cambisol. -A/B/C profiled soil B horizon, fully developed, older, red Mediterranean soils / luvisol: generated by rubefaction (wet season short and long hot dry rotation) typical Mediterranean red soils, podzol: instead of conifers planted in areas where native vegetation in the Basque Country, loss of bases, the A horizon, the color gray.