Mar 27, · The Importance of Ecosystem Essay. Post author. By Joseph. Post date. March 27, Recent growth in scientific knowledge has helped humanity comprehend the complex relationships in ecosystems and the devastating effects of human interference. As a result we have become increasingly aware of the need to protect and manage the ecosystems that we do have remaining for Estimated Reading Time: 8 mins Essay Contents: Essay on the Meaning of Ecosystem Essay on the Components of Ecosystem Essay on Ecosystem Productivity Essay on Ecosystem Diversity Essay on Ecosystem Goods and Services Essay on Homeostasis in EcosystemEstimated Reading Time: 8 mins Sep 20, · Conclusion INTRODUCTION ON ECOSYSTEM An ecosystem is a community of living organisms (plants and animals) sharing an environment. The largest ecosystems are called biomes. An ecosystem consists of the biological community that occurs in some locale, and the physical and chemical factors that make up its non-living or abiotic environment
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Read this essay to learn about ecosystem. After reading this essay you will learn about: 1. Meaning of Ecosystem 2. Components of Ecosystem 3, essay on ecosystem.
Productivity 4. Diversity 5. Ecosystem Goods and Services 6. Essay 1. An ecosystem is a system formed by the interactions of a variety of individual organisms with each other and with their physical environment.
Ecosystems are nearly self-contained so essay on ecosystem the exchange of nutrients within the system is much greater than exchange with other system. An ecosystem, thus, is not entirely a biological entity. Any complete description of an ecosystem must include the physical environment as well as the biological components and the interactions between the two. Essay 2. Components of Ecosystem: An ecosystem is not entirely a biological entity. The biological or biotic components of an ecosystem include both living organisms and products of these organisms, essay on ecosystem.
Thus microbes, all categories of plants and animals as well as their waste products are included in the ecosystems. The non-biological or abiotic components include climatic and edaphic features, in particular climatic components like sunlight, temperature, essay on ecosystem, air and water supply along with soil component such as soil nutrients which are very important contributing factors of ecosystem operation.
The biotic components are broadly categorized as producers, and consumers of different classes viz. herbivores animals that eat plantscarnivores animals that eat flesh of other animalsomnivores animals that consume both plants and animals as available and lastly scavengers animals that eat dead plant and animal matters.
In addition there are decomposer classes, which include mostly saprophytic organisms that help in nutrients and element recycling process. They are heterotrophic organisms that feed solely on dead organic matter, i.
The bulk of the saprophytic decomposition is carried out by bacteria, fungi and protozoans. Imagine that a piece of organic Utter falls to the floor of a forest. In a typical sequence, microscopic bacteria or fungi will excrete chemicals, called enzymes, that break down the complex chemical compounds in the object Some of the breakdown products are absorbed as food, whereas others are left behind. These serve as a food supply for other organisms that carry the decomposition one step further.
Eventually the waste products of the final line of decomposers are energy-poor mineral nutrients that are reabsorbed, and thus recycled, by plants — Fig. Essay 3, essay on ecosystem. Ecosystem Productivity: During the process of production and consumption, energy is passed along, or flows, from one organism to another. For example, solar energy is converted to chemical essay on ecosystem within the leaves of green plants. The leaves can then be eaten by some herbivore, and the herbivore may, in turn, be eaten by a carnivore.
Consider a hypothetical ecosystem that receives 1, Kilocalories of light energy in a given day Fig. Most essay on ecosystem this energy is not absorbed at all. Some is simply reflected back into space. Of the energy that is absorbed, most is stored as heat or used for evaporation of water, essay on ecosystem.
A small amount is assimilated by plants. The productivity in an ecosystem are of two kinds—primary productivity and secondary productivity. The primary productivity of an ecosystem is the rate at which organic matter is produced during photosynthesis. Some amount of photosynthetic material is subsequently utilized for respiratory purpose. The net gain in plant matter is called the net primary productivity. On the whole, productivity depends on a variety of essay on ecosystem such as sunlight, temperature, essay on ecosystem, rainfall and the availability of nutrients.
The total quantity of organic matter present at any one time in an ecosystem is called the biomass. The biomass equals the total organic matter gained through net primary productivity over a period of time minus the quantity of material that is consumed and lost during respiration by animals. Let us return to the hypothetical ecosystem that receives 1, Kcal of sunlight Fig. Although the efficiency of energy transfer varies from ecosystem to ecosystem, as an average value, essay on ecosystem, of the 1, Kcal absorbed, only about 12 Kcal are utilized during photosynthesis.
Of these 12 Kcal, 2 Kcal are used for plant respiration and about 10 Kcal are stored in the plant tissue as energy-rich material, which animals can use for food. The net primary productivity of various ecosystems varies distinctly. Among them tropical rain forests are most productive and rock, ice and sandy areas are least productive ecosystems Table 5. The variation in global patterns of primary production illustrates the range and variety of ecosystem character and functioning.
The main factors affecting global patterns of primary production are light, heat, water, carbon dioxide and oxygen, and nutrient elements. In the oceans there are very well-mapped and predictable patterns of primary productivity Table 5.
Russian oceanographic research work during the s defined five main productive regions of the oceans. In general, productivity is highest where there is a strong circulation of water, with upwelling currents brining deep water to the surface. Nutrient concentrations tend to the greater in deep essay on ecosystem due to the continuous rain of material from shallow waters, down past the euphotic zone where autotrophs can recycle the nutrients into the food chain.
High productivity is commonest in shallow waters, where plants can grow to larger sizes. Human impacts upon primary production are very important in many ecosystems, essay on ecosystem. The broad pattern of natural environmental factors which control primary production at a global scale is shown in Table 5.
This, however, provides only a generalized overview of ecosystem productivity at biome level. The pattern of influence of the major limiting factors shown is frequently different at regional or local scales. Secondary productivity is defined as the rate of formation of new organic matter by heterotrophs of the net primary productivity essay on ecosystem in a forest, herbivores e. Very little of the plant matter that is consumed is actually converted to animal tissue. In terms of energy content, the conversion is only about 10 per cent.
To summarise, although there are large variations from ecosystem to ecosystem, as a generalisation, for every 10 Kcal of plant tissue available to herbivores, about 1 Kcal will be eaten, and only about 0. Carnivores that eat herbivores are likewise inefficient in converting food to body weight, so the energy available to the carnivore is even less.
It is obvious, essay on ecosystem, then, that the amount of usable energy decreases, as it is transferred from sunlight to plants to animals. Thus there is a decreasing quantity of energy available at each trophic level. As a consequence, there will be a decreasing mass of organisms at each level. This relationship can essay on ecosystem shown as Fig.
The flow of food energy in an ecosystem progress essay on ecosystem a food chain in which one step follows another—primary consumers eat producers, secondary consumers eat primary consumers, and so on.
Within any ecosystem there are two major food chains, the grazing food chain and the detrital food chain Fig. The two-food chains are distinguished by their source of energy or food for the initial consumers. In grazing ecosystems autotrophs, or living plant tissues, are the primary source of energy for essay on ecosystem initial consumers, the herbivores. In the detrital food chain, the initial consumers, primarily bacteria and fungi, use dead organic matter, detritus, as essay on ecosystem source of energy.
The grazing food chain is the one more obvious to us. Cattle grazing on pastureland, deer browsing in the forest, rabbits feeding in old fields, and insect pests feeding on garden crops represent the basic consumer groups of the grazing food chain.
Although highly conspicuous, the grazing food chain is not the major food chain in terrestrial and many aquatic ecosystems. Only in some aquatic ecosystems do the grazing herbivores play a dominant role in energy flow. Voluminous data exist on phytoplankton productivity, filtration rates by grazing zooplankton, and production efficiencies of zooplankton. Few data, however, are available on the flow of energy, essay on ecosystem, rate of grazing, biomass turnover rates for phytoplankton, and turnover of zooplankton biomass within the same aquatic system.
In terrestrial systems, a small proportion of primary production goes by way of the grazing food chain. Over a three year period, only 2. The detrital food chain is common to all ecosystems, but in terrestrial and littoral ecosystems it is the major pathway of energy flow. In yellow-poplar Liriodendron tulipifera forests, 50 per cent of gross primary production goes into maintenance and respiration, 13 per cent is accumulated as new tissue, 2 per cent is consumed by herbivores, and 35 per cent goes to the detrital food chain.
Two-thirds to three-fourths of the energy stored in a grassland ecosystem that is un-grazed by cattle is returned to the soil as dead plant material, and less than one-fourth is consumed by herbivores. Of the quantity consumed by herbivores, about essay on ecosystem half is returned to the soil as feces, essay on ecosystem.
In the salt march ecosystem, the dominant grazing herbivore, the grasshopper, essay on ecosystem, consumes just 2 per cent of the net production available to it. Other feeding groups, such as the parasites and scavengers, form supplementary food chains in the community. Parasitic food chains are highly complicated because of the life cycle of the parasites.
Some parasites are passed from one host to another by predators in the food chain. External parasites ectoparasites may move from one host to another. Other parasites are transmitted by insects from one host to another through the blood-stream or plant fluids.
However, natural systems are rarely so orderly and linear. Many organisms occupy several trophic levels simultaneously. For example, a essay on ecosystem can be a primary consumer when it eats corn, a secondary consumer when it eats grasshoppers, and a essay on ecosystem consumer if it manages to catch a shrew or small snake.
In addition, ravens will eat dead animals and are, therefore, also scavengers. In nearly all natural ecosystems, the patterns of consumption are so complicated that the term food web is more descriptive because there are many cross-links connecting the various organisms Fig. Once food is eaten, its energy follows a variety of pattern through the organisms. Not all food can be fully digested and assimilated.
Hair, feathers, insect exoskeletons, cartilage and bone in animal foods and cellulose and ligin in plant foods cannot be digested by most animals. These materials are either egested by defecation or regurgitated in pellets of indigested remains.
Bronfenbrenner's ecological theory
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Searching For ecosystem Essay Examples? Then you have found the right place! Biggest Database of Free Essays on ecosystem Best Quality of Every Paper Mar 13, · The ecosystem is the structural and functional unit of ecology where the living organisms interact with each other and the surrounding environment. In other words, an ecosystem is a chain of interaction between organisms and their environment. The term “Ecosystem” was first coined by blogger.comy, an English botanist, in Estimated Reading Time: 6 mins Mar 15, · Essay on the Meaning of Ecosystem: The term an ecosystem is originally defined by Tansley ().Estimated Reading Time: 8 mins
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