NATS 1840 Lecture Notes - Lecture 3: Detritivore, Heterotroph, Lithosphere
Document Summary
Nats 1840 chapter 4 notes october 11, 2016. Ecology: the study of interactions among living things, and between living things and their physical environment. The physical environment: divided into three broad compartments: the atmosphere (air, the hydrosphere (liquid & frozen water, the lithosphere (rocks & soil) The collision of plates leads to mountains, tectonic, and volcanic activity: fractured rock forms basis of soil. Species: living organisms that can breed with one another. Population: members of a species living in one place. Community: a collection of communities living in one area at one time. Ecosystem: combination of society (biota) and its physical environment, including all interactions between compartments. All the energy available on earth comes to us from the sun. Albedo: the amount of power reflected away from the earth or any planet. Expression as a fraction of the incident power. Depends on nature of surface and of atmosphere.
