BISC302 Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: Terrestrial Ecosystem, Ionosphere, Thermosphere
3 Sep 2016
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Document Summary
Evidence for levels of ecological study comes from multiple sources. Hypotheses (educated guess about the answer to the question) Those are a reflections of prevailing environmental conditions (climate) Geographic variation in climate determines the large scale distributions of plants and thus terrestrial ecosystems. Climate = averages of temperature, rainfall, light, wind speed, etc. Weather = day to day variation in these same factors. Seasons = long term predictable variation in these factors - only truly outside of tropics, caused by changing angle of incoming radiation due to 23 degree tilt of earth"s axis. Stratosphere: lots of o3 - protexts tropospheric o2, screen out uv-b, etc. Tropopause, stratopause, mesopause = transition zones, prevents mixing between spheres. Every place on earth gets same number of hours of sunlight annually but equator gets more energy. Difference is magnified by differences in rates of reradiation. Warm air holds more water vapor than cool air. These 2 lead to patterns of general global air currents.
