Biotic & Abiotic Factors
Nonliving things that affect an ecosystem like rocks, minerals, and climate
What are abiotic Factors?
The number of different species that live in a certain area
What is biodiversity?
A straight line model showing how energy moves between various species in an ecosystem
What is a food chain?
What is exponential growth?
A proposal for new public policy to mitigate environmental disaster and create new social and economic programs
The name for all of the water on earth
What is the hydrosphere?
The "role" of a species in its environment.
What is a "niche"?
The percentage of energy that is retained as you go from one trophic level to a higher one.
What is 10%?
The "New Age of Mankind" (era of geologic history brought about by humans)
What is the Anthropocene?
Organisms that break down dead organic matter into simple, non-organic molecules
What are decomposers?
A large area with certain climate, plants, and animals
What is a biome?
No two species can occupy the same niche.
A species that plays in important role in maintaining the structure, stability, and diversity of an ecosystem. (often a top predator)
What is a "keystone species"?
The percentage of species that have ever lived on earth which are still alive today
What is 2%?
An ecological relationship that benefits both parties such as that between a clownfish and a sea anemone
What is mutualism?
All of the different populations that live in a certain area
What is a community?
The ecological relationship in which both parties are harmed because both rely on the same finite resource
What is "competition"?
The indirect downward effect that removing a top predator can have on lower trophic levels.
What is a trophic cascade?
When companies us deceptive marketing to make their practices seem more "ecological" than they really are.
What is "greenwashing"?
What is commensalism?
The two most important abiotic factors that influence life in a biome
What are moisture (precipitation) and temperature?
The three "symbiotic" ecological relationships.
What are Mutualism, Commensalism, and Parasitism?
If there are 1,000 lbs of edible herbs in an ecosystem, how many 2-lb rabbits could it support?
1,000 / 10 = 100 lbs of rabbit
100 / 2 lbs each = 50 rabbits
Final answer: 50
The term for benefits provided to humans from healthy ecosystems
What are "ecosystem services"? (I will also take "natural capital")
The number of years the IPCC said were left (as of 2018) to drastically change society in order to avert catastrophic climate change (1.5-2 degree C of warming)
What is 12 years?