Levels of Ecological Organization
This refers to a group of similar organisms that can breed and produce fertile offspring.
What is a species?
This location receives the most direct sunlight year round.
What is the equator?
These create currents along the surface of the ocean.
What are the prevailing winds?
This refers to all the gases that surround the earth.
What is the atmosphere?
Climate refers to the long-term patterns of this in a given area.
What is weather?
What is a population?
These belts of cold wind travel south from the north pole and travel from east to west.
What are the easterlies?
This is the reason why water near the poles is salty and, as a result, sinks.
This refers to all the living organisms and the environments they live in.
What is the biosphere?
This refers to the natural process in which certain gases trap sunlight energy in the earth’s atmosphere as heat
What is the greenhouse effect?
This refers to an assemblage of different populations that live together in a defined area.
What is a community?
What is low pressure?
What are nutrients?
This refers to all of the earth's water, be it fresh water, salt water, water vapor in the atmosphere, or ice.
What is the hydrosphere?
One of these is NOT a greenhouse gas: carbon dioxide, methane, nitrogen, or water vapor.
What is nitrogen?
This refers to all of the organisms that live in a place, together with their physical environment.
What is an ecosystem?
This is the official term that explains why an airplane flying from the north pole to the equator would have to overcorrect to the left to not end up too far right of its destination.
What is the Coriolis Effect?
Global ocean currents help bring this from the surface of the ocean to organisms in the depths that need it.
What is oxygen?
This refers to "all the usual solid stuff" - rocks, the continents, and the ocean floor. But it also includes the magma within the earth as well.
What is the geosphere?
This phenomenon explains why temperate lands due east of a body of water tend to experience more snow than elsewhere.
What is lake effect snow?
This refers to a group of ecosystems that share similar climates and typical organisms.
What is a biome?
This term can be used to describe a dour human mood or a ship stuck on the ocean with no wind.
What is the doldrums?
This process refers to prevailing winds pushing ocean currents away from a continent, causing deep and cooler water to flow upward to take its place.
What is upwelling?
This refers to any nonliving factor that could affect an organism. Examples include sunlight, precipitation, soil, wind, or water.
What is an abiotic factor?
This is the reason why coastal land tends to stay cooler in the summers and warming in the winter.
What is a quality of water - it is slow to heat and slow to cool.