Terms : Hide Images
| 8227994422 | chemoautotrophs | obtain energy by oxidizing sulfur taken up by their sulfate rich environment, they use iron as a final electron acceptor in their reactions | 0 | |
| 8228033042 | ecosystem | the sum of all the organisms living in a given area and the abiotic factors with which they interact, encompasses a vast area | 1 | |
| 8228043810 | photosynthetic and chemosynthetic organisms | take up elements in inorganic form from the air, soil, and water and incorporate them into their biomass, some of which is consumed by animals | 2 | |
| 8228075737 | cells | transform energy and matter, subject to the laws of thermodynamics | 3 | |
| 8228083448 | ecosystem ecologists | study how energy and matter are transformed within a system and measure the amounts of both that cross the system's boundaries | 4 | |
| 8228101980 | first law of thermodynamics | energy cannot be created or destroyed by only transferred or transformed | 5 | |
| 8228115245 | second law of thermodynamics | every exchange of energy increases the entropy of the universe | 6 | |
| 8228838026 | law of conservation of mass | a physical law stating that matter can change form but cannot be created or destroyed. In a closed system, the mass of the system is constant | 7 | |
| 8229037332 | primary producers | an autotroph, usually a photosynthetic organism. Collectively, autotrophs make up the trophic level of an ecosystem that ultimately supports all other levels | 8 | |
| 8229055459 | primary consumers | an herbivore; an organism that eats plants or other autotrophs | 9 | |
| 8229064692 | secondary consumers | a carnivore that eats herbivores | 10 | |
| 8229070152 | tertiary consumer | a carnivore that eats other carnivores | 11 | |
| 8229075584 | detritivore | a consumer that derives its energy and nutrients from nonliving organic material such as corpses, fallen plant material, and the wastes of living organisms; a decomposer | 12 | |
| 8229093152 | decomposer | an organism that absorbs nutrients from nonliving organic material such as corpses, fallen plant material, and the wastes of living organisms and converts them to inorganic forms; a detritivore | 13 | |
| 8229116315 | detritus | dead organic matter | 14 | |
| 8229129613 | primary production | the amount of light energy converted to chemical energy (organic compounds) by the autotrophs in an ecosystem during a given time period | 15 | |
| 8229158254 | gross primary production (GPP) | the total primary production of an ecosystem; the amount of energy from light converted to the chemical energy of organic molecules per unit time | 16 | |
| 8229172933 | net primary production (NPP) | the gross primary production of an ecosystem minus the energy used by the producers for respiration | 17 | |
| 8229218360 | net ecosystem production (NEP) | the gross primary production of an ecosystem minus the energy used by all autotrophs and heterotrophs for respiration | 18 | |
| 8229239969 | limiting nutrient | an element that must be added for production to increase in a particular area | 19 | |
| 8229264512 | eutrophication | a process by which nutrients, particularly phosphorus and nitrogen, become highly concentrated in a body of water, leading to increased growth of organisms such as algae or cyanbacteria | 20 | |
| 8229299070 | secondary production | the amount of chemical energy in consumers' food that is converted to their own new biomass during a given time period | 21 | |
| 8229318812 | production efficiency | the percentage of energy stored in assimilated food that is not used for respiration or eliminated as waste | 22 | |
| 8229336499 | trophic efficiency | the percentage of production transferred from one trophic level to the next | 23 | |
| 8229348975 | turnover time | the time required to replace the standing crop of a population or group of populations, calculated as the ratio of standing crop to population | 24 | |
| 8229365006 | biogeochemical cycle | any of the various chemical cycles that involve both biotic and abiotic components of ecosystems | 25 | |
| 8229376769 | water | availability influences the rates of ecosystem processes particularly primary production and decomposition in terrestrial ecosystems | 26 | |
| 8229390852 | key processes of the water cycle | evaporation of liquid water by solar energy, condensation of water vapor into clouds, ,and precipitation. Transpiration by terrestrial plants also moves large volumes of water into the atmosphere. Surface and groundwater flow can return water to the oceans | 27 | |
| 8230912781 | key processes of the carbon cycle | photosynthesis by plants and phytoplankton removes substantial amounts of atmospheric carbon dioxide | 28 | |
| 8230932392 | nitrogen fixation | the conversion of N2 to forms that can be used to synthesize organic nitrogen compounds | 29 | |
| 8230957497 | key processes of the phosphorus cycle | weathering of rocks gradually adds phosphorus to soil | 30 | |
| 8231033014 | bioremediation | the use of organisms to detoxify and restore polluted and degraded ecosystems | 31 | |
| 8231047035 | biological augmentation | an approach to restoration ecology that uses organisms to add essential materials to a degraded ecosystem | 32 | |
| 8231087630 | limitation of aquatic systems | light and nutrients | 33 | |
| 8231090602 | limitation of terrestrial ecosystems | climatic factors such as temperature and moisture | 34 |
