Matthew Park (Pd.

4)

Chapter 54 Guide Questions 1. Define an ecosystem and how does the Principle of Conservation of Energy play a role in the maintenance of an ecosystem? Answer: An ecosystem is a system that consists of all the organisms living in a community as well as all the abiotic factors with which they interact. We can potentially account for the transfer of energy through an ecosystem from its input as solar radiation to its release as heat from organisms. 2. What are the Laws of Thermodynamics and how do they apply in an ecosystem? Answer: Specifically, the second law states that some energy is always lost as heat in any conversion process. This idea suggests that we can measure the efficiency of ecological energy conversions in the same way we measure the efficiency of lightbulbs. 3. How are trophic relationships organized? In other words, what are the different trophic levels of an ecosystem? Answer: Primary producers, primary consumers, secondary consumers, tertiary consumers, detritivores. 4. What is primary production? What is the starting point for studies of ecosystem metabolism and energy flow? Answer: The amount of light energy converted to chemical energy by autotrophs during a given time period; the photosynthetic product. 5. Define gross primary production (GPP). Answer: The total primary production in an ecosystem. 6. Define net primary production (NPP). Answer: A quantitative value equivalent to gross primary production minus the energy used by the primary producers for respiration. 7. What are the units for net primary production? Answer: energy per unit area per unit time (J/meters squared/year) 8. What is standing crop? Answer: The total biomass of photosynthetic autotrophs at a given time period. 9. What kind of ecosystems have the most productive terrestrial ecosystem and contribute a large portion of the planets overall net primary production? Answer: Tropical rain forests. 10. What is a limiting nutrient?

Matthew Park (Pd. 4)

Answer: An element that must be added to an ecosystem in order for production to increase in a particular area. 11. Knowing that nitrogen was a limiting nutrient for phytoplankton growth, how is this applicable to other forms of pollution? Use an example. Possible Answer: This can be used to prevent algal blooms caused by pollution that fertilizes the phytoplankton. (Removal of phosphates fro sewage.) 12. What other kind of nutrient factor in marine ecosystems is actually related to the nitrogen factor? Answer: Iron. 13. What is eutrophication? Describe the process. Answer: The domination of cyanobacteria in phytoplankton communities. 14. What is actual evapotranspiration? Answer: The annual amount of water transpired by plants and evaporated from a landscape. 15. Define secondary production of an ecosystem. Answer: The amount of chemical energy in consumers food that is converted to their own new biomass during a given time period. 16. What is production efficiency? Answer: The fraction of energy stored in food that is not used for respiration. 17. What is trophic efficiency? Answer: The percentage of production transferred from one trophic level to the next. 18. What can be used to represent the loss of energy with each transfer in a food chain and how does this diagram depict that? Answer: Pyramid of net production. 19. How can one important ecological consequence of low trophic efficiencies be represented? Answer: Using a biomass pyramid. 20. What are the several factors proposed by the green world hypothesis? Answer: Plants have defenses against herbivores; Nutrients, not energy supply, usually limit herbivores; Abiotic factors limit herbivores; Intraspecific competition can limit herbivore numbers; Interspecific interactions keep herbivore densities in check. 21. What does this diagram depict about biogeochemical cycles?

Matthew Park (Pd. 4)

Answer: Arrows indicate the processes that move nutrients between reservoirs. 22. What are the four biogeochemical cycles and describe each one. Answer: Water cycle, Carbon cycle, Nitrogen Cycle, Phosphorus Cycle.

23. Define critical load. Answer: The amount of added nutrient, usually nitrogen or phosphorus, that can be absorbed by added nutrients without damaging ecosystem integrity. 24. Define biological magnification. Answer: A process in which toxins become more concentrated in successive trophic levels of a food web. 25. What is the greenhouse effect? Answer: A process characterized by the retainment of solar heat within the Earths atmosphere due to the accumulation of certain gases. Chapter 54 Quiz Questions: 1. Tropical rain forests have the most productive terrestrial net primary production. What other type of ecosystem also has a very high net primary production, but contributes only a small amount to the global net primary production? Answer: Estuaries and coral reefs. 2. Complete the diagram. ________ leads to an increase in ___________ populations, leading to an increase in nitrogen fixation, thus leading to an increase in _____________ production. Answer: Iron; cyanobacteria; phytoplankton 3. True or false: In many freshwater lakes, phytoplankton communities that had been dominated by diatoms became dominated by green algae. Answer: False; phytoplankton communities were eventually dominated by cyanobacteria, thus completing the process of eutrophication. 4. Given that 67J of the 100J of assimilated energy in caterpillars is used for respiration, what is the production efficiency of a caterpillar? Answer: 33% 5. Trophic efficiencies must always be ______ (than/equal to) production efficiencies. Answer: less than

Matthew Park (Pd. 4)

6. In ______________, ammonium ions are converted to NO3- by nitrifying bacteria, while ________ decomposes organic nitrogen to ammonium ions. Answer: Nitrification; ammonification 7. Because humus and soil particles bind phosphates, the recycling of phosphorus tends to be quite __________ in ecosystems. Answer: localized (or other synonymous words) 8. What chemicals are primarily responsible for the formation of acid precipitation? Answer: Sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides that react in the atmosphere to form sulfuric and nitric acids. 9. ___________ tend to be the organisms that are most severely affected by toxic compounds in the environment, due to __________________. Answer: Top-level carnivores; biological magnification. 10. True or false: Chlorine from chlorofluorocarbons interacts with ozone, forming carbon dioxide and oxygen. Answer: false; they form chlorine monoxide molecules instead of carbon dioxide.