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17 Cards in this Set
- Front
- Back
Primary Producer |
- autotrophs (self-feeder) - an organism that can synthesize its own food from inorganic sources (usually via photosynthesis) - Do not create energy, only transform it |
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Gross Primary Productivity (GPP) |
- Total amount of chemical energy produced in a given area and time period |
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Net Primary Productivity (NPP) |
- energy that is invested by primary producers in building new tissue or offspring NPP = GPP - R (where R is the energy used in cellular respiration or lost as heat) |
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Food Chain |
- focuses on one possible pathway of energy flow among trophic (feeding) levels in an ecosystem |
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Food Web |
- includes ALL the organisms interacting in an ecosystem along with estimates of the amount of energy transferred at each link |
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Efficiency |
- fraction of biomass transferred from one trophic level to the next |
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Who is more efficient, ectotherms or endotherms? |
- Ectotherms - they don't have to spend energy maintaining temperature |
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Biomagnification |
- increase in concentration at higher levels in a food chain of persistent pollutants (toxins) |
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Trophic Cascade |
- when changes in top-down control cause clear effects two or three links away in a food chain - E.g. Yellowstone Wolves |
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Is NPP higher on land or in water and why? |
- higher on land - because much more light is available |
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Biochemical Cycle |
- the path an element takes as it moves from abiotic systems through producers, consumers and decomposers and back again |
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Water Level |
- the level where soul is saturated with stored water |
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Positive Feedback in Climate Change |
- changes due to global warming result in the further acceleration of warming |
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Negative Feedback in Climate Change |
- changes due to global warming result in increased and separation of CO2 and other green house gases |
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Phenology Shift |
- changes in the timing of seasonal events |
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Geographic Range Shift |
- geographic redistribution of species to more favorable climate envelopes - can change ecological interactions |
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Acidification |
- the ocean becomes more acidic as it absorbs CO2 |