Indivduals
The maximum population size of a species or "load" that can be sustainably supported by a given environment.
What is carrying capacity?
The organisms and the physical environment with which it interacts.
What is an ecosystem?
Carbon-containing molecules associated with living organisms, for example, carbohydrates, lipids, nucleic acids, proteins, and hydrocarbon fuels.
What are organic substances?
Compounds which do not contain carbon (with the exception of carbon dioxide and carbonates) and are not derived from living matter.
What are inorganic substances?
The lithosphere
Which sphere contains carbon stores in fossil fuels and in rocks, such as limestone, that contain calcium carbonate?
Limiting factors that are related to the size of a population and limit population growth.
What are density dependent factors?
A single species in an ecosystem that maintains its structure and function.
What is a keystone species?
Two or more food chains linked together and can show that a single species can occupy multiple trophic levels.
What are foodwebs?
The process of capturing and storing atmospheric carbon dioxide.
What is carbon sequestration?
Evaporation and Transpiration
What are two processes that converted water to vapor?
Limiting factors that do not depend on the size of a population.
What are density independent factors?
Quantitative models showing changes between organisms at different trophic levels in a food chain. They include pyramids of numbers, biomass, and productivity.
What is an ecological pyramid?
The total gain in biomass by an organism.
What is GPP (gross primary productivity) OR GSP (gross [secondary] productivity)?
Planting trees to replace lost forestland
What is reforestation?
Surface Runoff and Groundwater Flow
What are two methods by which water on land returns to the oceans?
A group of populations of different species living and interacting with each other in the same area.
What is a community?
The build-up of persistent or non-biodegradable pollutants within an organism or trophic level because they cannot be broken down.
What is biomagnification/ bioaccumulation?
The gain in energy or biomass per unit area per unit time remaining after allowing for respiratory losses (R).
What is net productivity?
The Sun
What is the source of energy in land based ecosystems?
Combustion & Respiration
What are two ways that carbon enters the atmosphere?
A group of organisms that share common characteristics and that interbreed to produce fertile offspring.
What is species?
plants or photosynthetic bacteria
An example of organisms on the lowest trophic level?
The mass of organic matter since water represents the majority of inorganic matter in most organisms.
What is dry mass (biomass)?
Respiration: sugar to heat &
Photosynthesis: Light to sugar
What is an energy transformations involved in respiration and photosynthesis?
Decomposition
How is the carbon of dead organisms recycled back into the ecosystem?