Cycles of Matter
This cycle involves evaporation, condensation, and precipitation.
What is the water cycle?
Organisms that make their own food using sunlight.
What are producers?
The maximum number of individuals an environment can support.
What is carrying capacity?
This biome is cold, dry, and has permafrost.
What is the tundra?
Cutting down large areas of forest.
What is deforestation?
Plants take in this gas during photosynthesis and release it during cellular respiration.
What is carbon dioxide?
A diagram that shows one possible feeding relationship.
What is a food chain?
A factor that limits population growth, such as food or space.
What is a limiting factor?
This biome has the highest biodiversity on Earth.
What is the tropical rainforest?
Excess nutrients entering water can cause algal blooms in this process.
What is eutrophication?
Bacteria in the soil convert nitrogen gas into usable forms for plants in this process.
What is nitrogen fixation?
Only about this percentage of energy moves from one trophic level to the next.
What is 10%?
A relationship where both organisms benefit.
What is mutualism?
The variety of life in an ecosystem.
What is biodiversity?
Gases like CO₂ trap heat in the atmosphere.
What is the greenhouse effect?
This cycle includes weathering of rocks to release phosphate into soil and water.
What is the phosphorus cycle?
These organisms break down dead matter and recycle nutrients.
What are decomposers?
When two species compete for the same niche, one will outcompete the other.
What is competitive exclusion?
Large geographic areas with similar climate and organisms.
What are biomes?
Species brought into an ecosystem that cause harm.
What are invasive species?
Burning fossil fuels adds large amounts of this gas to the atmosphere, affecting climate.
What is carbon dioxide (CO₂)?
The total amount of living tissue within a trophic level.
What is biomass?
A population grows rapidly at first, then levels off in this type of growth curve.
What is logistic growth?
This biome has low rainfall, extreme temperatures, and organisms adapted to conserve water.
What is the desert?
The gradual increase in Earth’s average temperature.
What is global warming?