1. Ecosystems: Let’s Review Nature’s
Four Principles of Sustainability
• Reliance on solar
energy
• Biodiversity
• Population Control
• Nutrient Cycling

2. Let’s Look at Species by The Numbers

3. What Does This Look Like As Far As
Percent?
• 53% Insects (plus 20% “all other animals”)
• 4% Protists Endangered
Northern
• 4% Fungi
Right Whale
and Calf
• 1% Prokaryotes
• 18% Plants

4. How are
organisms
distributed?
• Population: a group of
interacting organisms of the
same species.
• Community: populations of
different species that live and Wetland
interact in a given area.
• Ecosystem: a community of
organisms that interact with
their non-living environment.

5. How are Communities Made Up?
• Producers: autotrophs like plants take solar
energy and convert it into plant tissue and
high energy compounds
• Consumers: heterotrophs eat producers
for energy and to build tissue.
• Decomposers: a heterotroph that breaks
down dead producers and consumers for
energy and recycles nutrients.

6. Biomes- large regions with specific
species adapted to the climates that
characterize these regions
• Tundra
• Coniferous Forest
• Deciduous Forest
• Tropical Rainforest

7. Biomes- large regions with specific
species adapted to the climates that
characterize these regions
• Tundra
• Coniferous Forest
• Deciduous Forest
• Tropical Rainforest

8. Biomes- large regions with specific
species adapted to the climates that
characterize these regions
• Tundra
• Coniferous Forest
• Deciduous Forest
• Tropical Rainforest

9. Biomes- large regions with specific
species adapted to the climates that
characterize these regions
• Tundra
• Coniferous Forest
• Deciduous Forest
• Tropical Rainforest

10. More Biomes...
• Grasslands
• Desert

11. More Biomes...
• Grasslands
• Desert

12. Range of Tolerance: variations in light,
salinity, pH, temperature, moisture, and D.O.
within which an organism can survive.

13. Energy Flow in Ecosystems
Diatoms
Copepod
Humpback
Humpback Herring

14. Pyramid of Energy: Second Law of
Thermodynamics only allows 10% energy
transfer to each trophic level
Humpback 100 kCal
Herring 1000 kCal
Copepod 10,000 kCal
Diatom 100,000 kCal

15. Food Web: those who eat
v. those who get eaten

16. Biogeochemical Cycles: Focus on
Nitrogen and Phosphorus
Nitrogen Cycle (78% of
the atmosphere is N2)
Nitrogen Fixation: N2 NH3 Plants Animals
Nitrification: NH3 NO2 NO3 Plants Animals
Bacteria drive this process

17. Nitrogen Cycle-Human Impacts
• Hubbard Brook Study
(NH)***
• NO added by internal
combustion engine
• N O from livestock
2
waste and fertilizer
• NO 3 from fertilizers

18. Nitrogen Cycle-Human Impacts
• Hubbard Brook Study
(NH)***
• NO added by internal
combustion engine
• N O from livestock
2
waste and fertilizer
• NO 3 from fertilizers

19. Phosphorus Cycle
• Not part of the atmosphere
• Soil, rock, guano deposits
• terrestrial and marine origins
• cycling is slow mostly PO 4

20. Phosphorus Cycle-
Human Impacts
• Overuse of phosphate fertilizers
• Decrease in soil phosphorus in tropics
because of deforestation
• Eutrophication caused by phosphates in
wastewater reaching aquatic ecosystems

21. Remote Sensing, GIS, and Technology
• GIS- Geographic Information Systems
• Integrated maps of watersheds, forest
cover, species distribution, human
activities
• Satellite imagery
• GOMoos http://gomoos.org