The breaking down of dead organic matter by living organisms such as bacteria
What is biodegradation?
100
Each step in a food chain
What is a trophic level?
100
Chemicals that are required for plant and animal growth and other life processes
What are nutrients?
100
Synthetic materials that were once used in industrial products and are stored in fat in animals when consumed
What are PCBs?
100
Accumulation is measured in these units
What are parts per million (ppm)?
200
The total mass of living plants, animals, fungi, and bacteria in a given area
What is biomass?
200
Consumers that obtain their energy and nutrients by eating the bodies of small dead animals, dead plant matter, and animal wastes
What are detrivores?
200
A chemical reaction that converts solar energy in to chemical energy
What is photosynthesis?
200
Name the two types of weathering
What is chemical and physical weathering?
200
Lead, Mercury and Cadmium
What are heavy metals?
300
These change wastes and dead organisms into usable nutrients
What are decomposers?
300
Primary consumers that eat plants
What are herbivores?
300
The process in which both plants and animals release carbon dioxide back in to the atmosphere by converting carbohydrates and oxygen back in to carbon dioxide in to water
What is cellular respiration?
300
The process in which soil particles and decaying organic matter accumulate in layer on the ground or at the bottom of large bodies
What is sedimentation?
300
Species that greatly affect ecosystem health
What are keystone species?
400
The model that show the flow of energy from plant to animal and from animal to animal
What is a food chain?
400
Consumers that eat both plants and animals
What are omnivores?
400
Nitrogen gas is converted into nitrate and ammonium, compounds that are usable by plants
What is nitrogen fixation?
400
This nutrient is not stored in the atmosphere
What is phosphorous?
400
A process where micro-organisms or plants help clean up
What is bioremediation?
500
These critters eat primary producers
What are primary consumers?
500
Models of the feeding relationships within and ecosystem
What is a food web?
500
When there are too many nutrients in the water such as nitrogen in the water causing algae growth
What is eutrophication?
500
The gradual build op of pollutants in living organisms
What is bioaccumulation?
500
Pollutants not only accumulate, but also become more concentrated at each trophic level