ENV 1101 Lecture : Class 5 - Global Environmental Change.docx
Document Summary
A distinctive biotic community and the abiotic systems with which it interacts. The biotic grouping reproduces and perpetuates itself. System: a network of relationships among components that interact with and influence one another through the exchange of energy, matter and information. Open system: exchange energy and matter with systems outside itself. Closed system (earth): less common, earth contains all of its matter itself in a closed system. Autotrophs (producers): organisms that create organic matter: most commonly plants via photosynthesis, but also includes chemosynthetic deep-sea bacteria. Heterotrophs (consumers): must consume organic material produced by other organisms. Originally referred to $ in excess of that need to meet one"s own basic needs. Has been expanded to include human capital, social capital, cultural capital, religious capital. = goods and services humans derive from the natural environment. There is historically no price or financial value assigned to the environment: it is treated as free .