Environmental Science Chapter 3 Ecosystems And Energy

Front 1

Ernst Haeckel

Back 1

19th Century scientist that developed the concept of ecology. "Eco" Greek; House.

Front 2

Biotic

Back 2

Living in the environment, all organisms.

Front 3

Abiotic

Back 3

Nonliving or physical aspects of an environment.

Front 4

Species

Back 4

Group of similar organisms, members breed with each other to produce fertile offspring. Typically do not interbreed with organisms of another species.

Front 5

Population

Back 5

Group of organisms of the same species that live in the same setting.

Front 6

Community

Back 6

Association that consists of all different populations of species that live and interact in the same setting.

Front 7

Landscape

Back 7

Region that includes several interaction ecosystems.

Front 8

Biosphere

Back 8

Parts of Earth's atmosphere, ocean, land, and soil that contain living organisms.

Front 9

Closed System

Back 9

System that is self-contained, isolated, and does not exchange energy with the surroundings.

Front 10

First Law of Thermodynamics

Back 10

Conservation of Energy; energy is not destroyed nor created, but instead changes forms.

Front 11

Second Law of Thermodynamics

Back 11

Energy transfer is inefficient and a portion of the energy is always lost into an unusable form in the transformation of energy.

Front 12

Entropy

Back 12

Measure of discourse and randomness in the universe or a system.

Front 13

Energy Flow

Back 13

Passage of energy in one direction through a system.

Front 14

Detritivore

Back 14

Consumers of wastes and scraps; animal carcasses, leaf litter, feces.

Front 15

Saprotrophs

Back 15

Synonymous with decomposers; constume rotten and dead organic material and usually release inorganic materials as waste.

Front 16

Food web

Back 16

Realistic model of the flow of energy in a model of an ecosystem.

Front 17

Ecological Pyramid

Back 17

Graphically represents the energy values of each trophic level.

Front 18

Biomass Pyramid

Back 18

Illustrates the amount of biomass at each trophic level.

Front 19

Pyramid of Energy

Back 19

Represents the energy present in each trophic level.

Front 20

GPP

Back 20

Gross Primary Productivity; total amount of photosynthetic energy that plants capture and assimilate in a given period

Front 21

NPP

Back 21

Net Primary Productivity; Total production after account for losses through plant respiration.

Front 22

Peter Vitousek

Back 22

Calculated how much NPP is used by humans, totaling to 32% of land based ecosystems, while humans representing only 0.5% of biomass of Earth's consumers.