BIOL 103 Lecture Notes - Primary Production, Autotroph, Decomposer
Document Summary
Consist of communities of organisms that live in an area and their physical and chemical (abiotic) environment. Includes study of how energy flows among ecosystem components. How carbon and nitrogen and other key elements cycle through organisms, sediments, the oceans, the atmosphere, how humans affect the environment. An ecosystem can be thought of as an economy in which energy is currency. Gross primary productivity (gpp) is the rate at which photosynthesis captures energy. After plants and other producers carry out cellular respiration, the energy invested in new tissue is net primary productivity (npp) Npp is the energy available to consumers organisms that eat other organisms; herbivores eat plants, carnivores eat animals both lead to net secondary production after metabolism and waste accounted for. Decomposers or detritivores feed on waste products or the dead remains of other organisms. Energy flow through an ecosystem only 10% moves to next level.
