Definitions
The study of living things.
What is biology?
The atmosphere, hydrosphere, lithosphere, and biosphere.
What are the 4 spheres that make up the Earth?
The boreal forest, tundra, grassland, and temperate deciduous forest.
What are the 4 major biomes in Canada?
A sequence of organisms, each one feeding on the next, showing how energy is transferred from one organism to the next.
What is a food chain?
Light availability, water availability, nutrient availability, temp, acidity, and salinity.
What are abiotic factors of an ecosystem?
Anything that takes up space and has weight.
What is matter?
All living organisms that share a region and interact with each other and their nonliving environment .
What is an ecosystem?
The total amount of water on the planet.
What is the hydrosphere?
Abiotic factors: longer growing season than boreal forest, higher temps than boreal forest, fertile soil, up to 100cm of precipitation annually.
Biotic factors: deciduous trees and other flowering plants, tree and ground squirrels, deer, black bears.
What is a temperate deciduous forest?
A representation of the feeding relationships within a community.
What is a food web?
The interaction between individuals in the same species or in a separate species.
What are biotic factors of an ecosystem?
It is how matter moves through the biotic and abiotic environments.
What is a biogeochemical cycle?
The number and variety of species in an ecosystem.
What is biodiversity?
Hard part of the Earth's surface (land).
What is the lithosphere?
Abiotic factors: longer growing seasons than boreal forest, higher temps than boreal forest, fertile soil, enough precipitation to support grass growth but not enough for trees.
Biotic factors: bison, mice, snakes, hawks, coyotes, grasshoppers, fescue grasses.
What is a grassland?
The function a species serves in its ecosystem including what it eats and how it behaves.
What is ecological niche?
The maximum population size of a species that an ecosystem can sustain.
What is carrying capacity.
The evaporation, condensation, precipitation, and collection of water.
What is the water cycle?
The ability to maintain balance without interruption, loss of value, and weakening.
What is sustainability?
The layer of glasses above Earth's surface.
What is the atmosphere?
Abiotic factors: Low temps, short growing season, permafrost, poor soil quality, low amounts of precipitation (0-25cm annually).
Biotic factors: rapid-flowering plants, mosses lichens, caribou, artic foxes.
What is a tundra?
The process in which energy is released from food.
What is cellular respiration?
Any factor that restricts the size of a population. Factors can be biotic or abiotic.
What is the limiting factor?
The travelling of carbon atoms from the atmosphere to Earth and back into the atmosphere through photosynthesis, carbon fixation, cellular respiration, decomposition, and combustion.
What is the carbon cycle?
A large geographical region that is defined by climate as well as a specific set of biotic and abiotic features.
What is a biome?
The zone around Earth where life can exist. This layer of the Earth is made up of parts of the lithosphere, hydrosphere, and atmosphere.
What is the biosphere?
Biotic factors: coniferous trees, seed-eating birds, squirrels, snowshoe hares, black bears, grey wolves.
Abiotic factors: variable weather but warm enough there's no permafrost, fertile soil, over 30cm of precipitation annually.
What is a boreal forest?
Stored in bonds of chemical compounds, like atoms and molecules.
Where is chemical energy stored?
The ability for a species to survive within a range of abiotic factors.
What is the tolerance range?
The lithosphere and hydrosphere make up this part of the Earth.
What 2 spheres make up the surface of the Earth?