The Abiotic and Biotic Biosphere Components - Coursework Example

four abiotic and four biotic biosphere components in your current environment. Biotic biosphere components Some of the a biotic biosphere components in the current environment includes; Water Air In organic soil content Temperature Oceanic circulations patterns, Precipitation Biotic components in the environment includes Producers Consumers Decomposers Detritivores 2. Describe a negative and a positive feedback loop in your own words. Feedback loop is a circular process whereby the output of a system serves as an input to the same system. The feedback loop is divided into negative and feedback loop. In the negative feedback loop, the output resulting from a system that moves in a single direction acts as an input to the system in the other detection. In this scenario, input and output neutralizes another effects and therefore stabilizes the system. An example is the regulation of the body temperature. When it’s too hot, the human sweat glands will pump out the moisture which evaporates to cool the human temperature. Positive feedback loops –This is the opposite of the negative feedback loop. It drives the system towards extremes instead of stabilizing it. An example is the melting if the sea ice in the Arctic and glaciers as a result of global warming. 3. Describe how neutrons, electrons, and protons are arranged in an atom. Atom is delineated as a building block of any matter. It joins together the molecules which forms most of the objects around us. They are composed of protons, electrons and neutrons. The protons and neutrons are at the centre of the atoms called nucleus while the electrons orbit the nucleus. Protons have a positive charge; electrons have a negative charge while the neutrons don’t have any charge. 4. What are isotopes? What are ions? Isotopes refer to the atoms with different numbers of neutrons. They are mainly denoted by different elementary symbols that are preceded by the mass number or the numbers of neutrons and protons in the atoms. For instance 2H (deuterium) is an isotope of the element hydrogen with a single neutron within the nucleus as opposed to the common 1H. Ions are atoms with extra electrons or missing electrons. When there is one or two electrons missing, there will be a positive charge while when there is an extra electron there will be a negative charge. (Wright, & Broose, 2011) 5. Use your own words to thoroughly describe the electron movement in a single covalent bond. The movement of electrons happens in the single covalent bonds. Two atoms of hydrogen for instance share their electrons when they bind together in order to form the hydrogen gas. An example is the formation of human blood, the ocean water and various metal alloys. (Wright, & Broose, 2011) 6. What are the four macromolecules that are found in all living organisms? The four types of molecules include; Proteins- Made up of long chains of different organic molecules referred to as amino acids. The organisms combine up to 20 different amino acids into long chains. Proteins forms the largest part of organisms matter and perform different functions of the living changes. Animals for instance use proteins in the generation of hair, skin, tendons and muscles. Some proteins helps in storage energy, others facilitate transportation of substance, defends the organism against foreign attackers while others act as hormone, serve as enzymes. Nucleic acids – It facilitates directing of production of proteins. The two main nucleic acids are ribonucleic acid (RNA) and deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) which carry different hereditary formations for organism. They are also in charge of passing traits from parents to offspring’s. Carbohydrates – This includes large molecules and simple sugars which composed of chemically bonded simple sugars; glucose act as building blocks and fuels living cells. Plants also use carbohydrates to build the structure. Lipids – These are chemically diverse group of compounds which are fully classified together since they are insolvent in water. Lipids include phosphosides, steroids, fats and oils. 7. Use your own words to describe the first two laws of thermodynamics. The first law of thermodynamics states that energy can easily be changed from one form to another but can neither be created nor destroyed. The total amount of matter and energy in the universe is always constant and only changes from one form to another. The second law of thermodynamics states that the energy nature can change from one ordered state to a state that is less ordered, if there is no force that contracts the tendency. It is usually referred to as entropy. For instance, a watch that is spring driven will run until its potential energy is converted and will not be able to run until the energy is reapplied. 8. What does it mean to say that energy flows through an ecosystem while nutrients are cycled within an ecosystem? The concept of ecosystem started when scientists noted that biological entities are intertwined with the physical and chemical aspect of the environment. Ecosystems are regarded as systems that get inputs of energy, process and later transform the energy while cycling the matter internally and ensuring the production of different outputs like flow of water, heat and animal waste products that feeds into the system. The flow of energy is in one direction through the ecosystem and mainly arrives through the radiation from the power system and the sun, and later exists in the form of heat. Matter is generally recycled within the ecosystems and the energy is passed amongst the organisms through the food web relationships. (Wright, & Broose, 2011) Matter is usually recycled back to the system because anytime an organism dies and decay, their relevant nutrients will remain in the ecosystem. The energy that is taken on the other hand will be lost through respiration. 9. How are humans altering the global carbon cycle? Why is the alteration of the carbon cycle in this way a concern? Carbon cycle mainly describes routes that atoms take in environment. The cycling is important as it forms the backbone of essential biological molecules. The producers often pull carbon dioxide to the atmosphere during photosynthesis. Autographs and heterotrophs eat the carbohydrates and release carbon back to the atmosphere. The largest impact of human in the carbon cycle is through the fossil fuels as a source of energy. It is estimated that human activities have added about 276 billion tons of the carbon dioxide to the system through natural gas, oil and coal. Also, when people cut down trees and burn forests the carbon that is in the leaves will be released to the system. Because of the reduced trees, photosynthesis will trap less carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. The main concern is that there will be serious climatic change. The incidences of global warming are attributed to these human activities. 10. In your own words, what are the differences between microevolution and macroevolution? Microevolution is process whereby there is a rearrangement or corrupting of pre-existing genetic information through the genetic mutation and sexual reproduction producing a small scale within a given population. Macroevolution changes to main changes over a period of time. It is the origin of new organism types from the existing ones but different types of ancestors. 11. What are the differences between populations and communities? Community – This refers to an assemblage of different organisms that live in the same area at the same time. Species who are members of a single community interact with one another and their interaction helps in the determination of their function, structure and their composition with communities. Population- This refers to group of individuals of the same species. The units of the study are the populations and entail the interactions of the individuals in terms of the growth, reproduction, dispersal amongst others. 12. Fully describe competition in an ecological context. Give an example Competition in the ecosystem occurs when organisms struggle and fight for similar scarce resources. Competing organisms main compete for the resources and not physically. Some of the resources organisms compete for include water, food, shelter, space, sunlight, mates among others. Intra-specific competition is when competition occurs between members of similar species while inter-specific competition is the competition between members of different species. An effective competitor is likely to exclude other organisms in the ecosystem from the available scarce resources. An example is the competition in the Great lakes where Zebra mussels have displaced native musseks. It is also possible that competitors may coexist and being able to adapt over evolutionary time as natural selection. For instance if the same birds eat similar type of seeds natural selection will take place and might favor species that ate specializing on large seeds. The process is referred to as resource partitioning since species divide resources they frequently use. In competitive interactions, all the participants have negative effect on the participants by taking resources that could have been used by others. There is also predation whereby individuals of one species predator consume kills and captures individuals of another species; prey. The other scenario is the parasites which is a relationship whereby organism which is a parasite depends on the host for some benefits or nourishment. 13. Fully describe exploitation in an ecological context. Give an example. Ecological exploitation is used to describe the use of resources considering the future. It is the use of the sources mainly thee resources that are renewable in a manner that does not hurt the environment or the destruction of the source. An example is the fate of the Armenia Tehgut forest. 14. What is coevolution? Give an example seen in nature. Coevolution is a term that is used to describe cases where by two or more species can affect the evolution of each other reciprocally. Some species within the community can interact intimately and therefore they can result into revolutionary changes in each other after a period of time. When a specific species develops various evolutionary advantages, there is a likelihood of it triggering changes in species that are closely related. An example is the hosts and parasites or predators and prey. A mutualistic is between moths and orchids. The moth feeds on the flowers and at the same time facilitates pollination in orchids. (Wright, & Broose, 2011) 15. What is a keystone species? How does its removal affect a community? Keystone species refers to some species that has a wide reaching or a strong impact out of control and the proportion to the abundance. A keystone refers to a stone that is wedge shaped at the peak of the arch holding the structure together. When a keystone is removed, it is likely that the arch will collapse. Within the ecological community, the elimination of the keystone species will result to ripple effects that will substantially change the food web. 16. Why is all of the energy in one trophic level not available to the organisms in the trophic level above it? Be thorough in your answer. At every atrophic level, organisms often use the energy within in circular respirations and most of the energy end up being given off as heat. Only a very small portion is being transferred or given to the next level through herbivore, predation and parasitism. The rough thumb rule states that every trophic level has 100% of the energy of the trophic level that is below it. The pattern is often visualized as a pyramid. The pattern holds for a number of organisms at every trophic level with fewer organisms existing at high trophic levels as compared to lower levels. 17. What are the main differences between primary and secondary succession? Succession occurs when the disturbances are very severe and might see the elimination of most part of the species in the community, and the sites that are affected might undergo predictable series of changes. There are two types of succession; primary and secondary succession. Primary succession follows the disturbance that is severe that soil life or vegetation remains within the community that occupied that site while secondary succession starts when the disturbance changes the existing community but does not destroy the entire life or the existing organic matter in the soil. In primary succession the biotic community is built from scratch while in secondary succession, life is built from the previous community remains. 18. How does the position of the sun relative to the earth change over the course of a year? Sun provides the required energy for different ecosystem processes to different organisms across the globe. With different movements across the earth, the position of the earth also changes in relevance to the position of the earth. The movement of the sun suits the activities of different ecosystem activities 19. Describe the major differences between temperate and tropical forests. Tropical rain forests which are warm all year are mainly found in Asia, Australia, South America, Central America and Africa having less than 167 cm of rainfall and more that 750 species of trees. Temperate forests are made of deciduas or trees which are evergreens; warm summers cold winters, made of some of the tallest trees in the world and have more than 140 cm of rains. 20. If you had to pick only one, on which biome do you think would be the most important to focus conservation efforts? Fully explain your answer. Biomes are a major regional complex of communities that are similar; an ecological unit that is large and mainly recognized by the plant type it has and the vegetation structure. Conservation of the biome is very important given that we share it worth others. The best biome to be conserved is the forest. Forest is important as they are home to a number of biotic communities across the globe. Logging of trees has depleted the old growth of a number of temperate forests. Without forest, there will be dirty water for the habitants. Therefore protecting forests will see the continuity of livings. Reference Wright, R. T., &Broose, D. F. (2011).Environmental science: Toward a sustainable future (11th ed.). Boston, MA: Pearson.doi:ISBN 978-0-321-59870-7 Read More