Living Things and the Environment

Practical Science IIChapter 11

What is Ecology?

• Environment – everything that surrounds an organism and acts upon it

• Interact – process of organisms acting upon one another or on the nonliving parts of their environment

• Ecology – the study of the relationships and interactions between organisms and all the living/nonliving parts of their environment

Why is ecology important?

• Earth’s resources limited• Medicines, e.g., tropical rainforests• Understanding nutrient cycling—slash & burn, agriculture• Rise in greenhouse gases—climate change (CO2, CFCs,

CH4)• Tropical Rainforests and greenhouse gases

To sum: basic ecology for maintaining ecosystem functioning

Biosphere

• Zone of the earth which supports life, including parts of the:

• Lithosphere (solid earth)

• Hydrosphere (water bodies)

• Atmosphere (envelope of air)

What is a Population?

• All of the same kind of organism (species) living in the same place

• All the deer in the Olympic National Park; all the tadpoles in Kilpisjarvi; all the hawks on the Rathdrum Prairie

What is a Community?

• All the different populations living in the same place

• All the trees in Post Falls; a mangrove forest community; the grasses on the Rathdrum Prairie

What is an Ecosystem?• A group of

communities interacting with each other and the non-living parts

Habitat

• Where an organism lives

• A physical place or type of place

Niche

• An organism’s role in the environment

• Producer, consumer (herbivore/carnivore), saprovore (scavenger/ decomposer)

Learn to share!

• Organisms can share the same habitat

• How?

• Timing their activities– Birds eat daytime insects in forest– Bats eat nighttime insects in same forest

• By occupying different niches– They don’t compete with each other– They complete each other

Are there limits?

• Limiting factors – conditions in an environment that place controls on how large a population can be

• Rainfall, sunlight, and soil limit numbers and kinds of plants in an area

• Temperature, water, food supply (# & kind of plants?), and shelter (plants again?) limit the animal populations

Obviously there are limits!

• The largest population that can be supported by an area is its carrying capacity

In real life…….

What is a Biome?• A large region with a characteristic

climate and plant/animal communities

Marine/Aquatic Tundra/Polar

Plain/prairie/savannaDeciduous/chapparalconiferous

What is a climatogram?• Summarizes temperature and precipitation

averages for a biome/location

Abiotic vs Biotic

Air

Rock

Trees

Water

Grass Dirt

Snow

Prairie Dog

Log cabin

Hierarchy of Life

Succession• A slow change in organism populations

• Change in dominant organisms

Pond Succession

Pond Succession

What are natural resources?

• Materials from nature which man uses to survive and better his condition

• Renewable – can be reused or replaced

• Nonrenewable – finite amount and cannot be replaced

• Conservation – wise use of resources to extend their availability

CLASSIFICATION OF NATURAL RESOURCES

Complexresources

Simple biotic resources

Recyclable Non-recyclable

RENEWABLE NON-RENEWABLE

NATURAL RESOURCES

UNCONDITIONALLY RENEWABLE

CONDITIONALLY RENEWABLE

Abiotic flow resources

Abiotic cycling resources

Renewable

Non-renewable

The End