Food Webs & Energy
This specific element forms the chemical "base" of all organic molecules.
What is Carbon?
This biological process performed by plants is the primary way carbon moves from the atmosphere into the biosphere.
What is Photosynthesis (or Carbon Fixation)?
Nitrogen gas (N2) makes up this percentage of Earth’s atmosphere.
What is 78%?
these organisms as "self-feeding" because they make organic food from inorganic sources.
What are Autotrophs?
This scientific law explains why the same nitrogen and carbon atoms on Earth today are the same ones that existed millions of years ago.
What is the Law of Conservation of Matter?
In an energy pyramid, this trophic level always contains the smallest amount of total biomass.
What is the Top Predator (or Quaternary/Tertiary/Apex Consumer)?
This term describes organisms like humans and fungi that must eat other organisms for energy and nutrients.
What are Heterotrophs?
These are the two essential biomolecules that all living things need nitrogen to build.
What are Proteins and Nucleic Acids (DNA)?
Because it traps heat in the atmosphere and prevents it from radiating into space, CO2 is known by this term.
What is a Greenhouse Gas?
These organisms, such as fungi and bacteria, are essential for "unlocking" nutrients trapped in dead tissue and returning them to the soil.
What are Decomposers?
In a food web diagram, the arrows always point in this direction
What is toward the eater (or the direction of energy flow)?
This term describes a reservoir, like the ocean or a forest, that absorbs and stores more carbon than it releases.
What is a Carbon Sink?
This is the only group of organisms capable of "fixing" nitrogen gas into a usable form like ammonia.
What are Bacteria (or Prokaryotes)
This specific environmental condition—meaning "oxygen-free"—is required for buried organic matter to eventually become fossil fuels.
What is Anaerobic?
Identify the "Slow Cycle" reservoir that acts as the primary source of carbon for modern vehicles.
What is Fossil Fuels (Coal, Oil, or Natural Gas)?
This is the approximate percentage of energy that is transferred from one trophic level to the next.
What is 10%?
This part of the carbon cycle involves the burial of organic matter and takes millions of years to complete.
What is the Slow (Geological) Cycle?
Besides bacteria, this high-energy physical event can break the strong triple bonds of N2 gas in the atmosphere.
What is Lightning?
This environmental phenomenon is caused when nitrogen oxides (NOx) from factories mix with water vapor in the clouds.
What is Acid Rain?
Under natural conditions (before humans), the "Slow Cycle" carbon stored underground only returns to the air through these rare events.
What are Volcanic Eruptions?
Unlike matter, energy cannot be recycled in an ecosystem because it is eventually lost to the environment in this form.
What is Heat?
This human activity acts as a "shortcut," moving carbon from the geosphere back into the atmosphere in a matter of seconds.
What is Combustion (burning fossil fuels)?
This specific process in the cycle returns nitrogen to the atmosphere by converting nitrates back into N2 gas.
What is Denitrification?
This term describes the rapid, "over-stimulated" growth of algae caused by excess fertilizer runoff in bodies of water.
What is Cultural Eutrophication?
If a nitrogen atom is currently in a plant's protein, name the process that moves it into the "ammonium" ($NH_4$) stage after the plant dies.
What is Ammonification?