Topic 7: Ecosystems: Energy Flow and Nutrient Cycling

How are humans impacticing the global carbon cycle

Burning fossil fuels

What is true about trophic levels

Energy, biomass, and numbers are all smaller at higher trophic levels, compared to lower trophic levels.

Nitrogen fixation is

converting nitrogen in the air into a form usable by plants

In a typical grassland community what is a primary consumer?

Grasshopper

Why does a vegetarian leave a smaller ecological footprint than a omnivore?

Eating meat is an inefficient way of acquiring photosynthetic productivity

What trophic level is most vulnerable to extinction?

Tertiary consumer level

How matter and energy is used in ecosystems?

Energy flows through ecosystems; matter cycles within and through ecosystems.

Most plants get N from

Nitrates in soil

Food webs are

Several species can be present in each trophic level.

What is true about human impacts on the global water cycle?

Withdrawals of surface water and groundwater for agriculture, industry, and domestic uses deplete rivers, lakes, and aquifers.

Water evaporating from the leaves in a process called

Transpiration

Organisms that produce chemical energy through photosynthetic process are called

Primary producers

An organism trophic level refers to

What it eats

Burning coal in a power plant would be part of which cycle

Carbon

What is a part of the natural nitrogen cycle

The nitrifying bacteria Convert nitrates in soil or water gaseous Nitrogen, which is released back into the atmosphere

How have humans impacted the nitrogen cycle

Humans have impacted the nitrogen cycle in all of these ways, water runoff, nitrogen base fertilizers, burning, fossil, fuels nitrogenous compounds

Why is a diagram of energy flow from traffic level to traffic level ship like a Pyramid

Most energy at each level is lost leaving little energy for the next level

Describes the energy that remains in autotrophs After respiration and it can be used to generate biomass such as leave stems and roots

Net Primary production

The biggest difference between the flow of energy and the flow of chemical nutrients in an ecosystem is that

Nutrients are recycled, but energy is not

The major role of detritrivores And decomposers and ecosystems is to

Eat dead or nonliving organic matter which recycled chemical nutrients to a form capable of being used by autotrophs

What happens to energy in matter as organisms eat each other?

It moves through the community from one trophic level to another

Which organisms can be found in the same trophic level

Crickets and cows

A cow’s herbivore diet indicate that is

Primary consumer

According to the pyramid of energy, how much energy of a trophic level is transferred to the next higher trophic level

10%