Living Things and the Environment

1. Living Things and the Environment Practical Science II Chapter 11

2. What is Ecology? • Environment – everything that surrounds an organism and acts upon it • Interact – process of organisms acting upon one another or on the nonliving parts of their environment • Ecology – the study of the relationships and interactions between organisms and all the living/nonliving parts of their environment

3. Why is ecology important? • Earth’s resources limited • Medicines, e.g., tropical rainforests • Understanding nutrient cycling—slash & burn, agriculture • Rise in greenhouse gases—climate change (CO2, CFCs, CH4) • Tropical Rainforests and greenhouse gases To sum: basic ecology for maintaining ecosystem functioning

4. Biosphere • Zone of the earth which supports life, including parts of the: • Lithosphere (solid earth) • Hydrosphere (water bodies) • Atmosphere (envelope of air)

6. All of the same kind of organism (species) living in the same place All the deer in the Olympic National Park; all the tadpoles in Kilpisjarvi; all the hawks on the Rathdrum Prairie What is a Population?

7. All the different populations living in the same place All the trees in Post Falls; a mangrove forest community; the grasses on the Rathdrum Prairie What is a Community?

8. A group of communities interacting with each other and the non-living parts What is an Ecosystem?

9. Where an organism lives A physical place or type of place Habitat

10. Niche • An organism’s role in the environment • Producer, consumer (herbivore/carnivore), saprovore (scavenger/ decomposer)

11. Learn to share! • Organisms can share the same habitat • How? • Timing their activities • Birds eat daytime insects in forest • Bats eat nighttime insects in same forest • By occupying different niches • They don’t compete with each other • They complete each other

12. Are there limits? • Limiting factors – conditions in an environment that place controls on how large a population can be • Rainfall, sunlight, and soil limit numbers and kinds of plants in an area • Temperature, water, food supply (# & kind of plants?), and shelter (plants again?) limit the animal populations

13. Obviously there are limits! • The largest population that can be supported by an area is its carrying capacity

14. In real life…….

15. What is a Biome? • A large region with a characteristic climate and plant/animal communities Marine/Aquatic Tundra/Polar coniferous Deciduous/chapparal Plain/prairie/savanna

18. What is a climatogram? • Summarizes temperature and precipitation averages for a biome/location

19. Abiotic vs Biotic

20. Air Rock Water Trees Prairie Dog Log cabin Snow Grass Dirt

21. Hierarchy of Life

22. Succession • A slow change in organism populations • Change in dominant organisms

23. Pond Succession

24. Pond Succession

25. What are natural resources? • Materials from nature which man uses to survive and better his condition • Renewable – can be reused or replaced • Nonrenewable – finite amount and cannot be replaced • Conservation – wise use of resources to extend their availability

26. CLASSIFICATION OF NATURAL RESOURCES NATURAL RESOURCES NON-RENEWABLE RENEWABLE Recyclable Non- recyclable UNCONDITIONALLY RENEWABLE CONDITIONALLY RENEWABLE Abiotic cycling resources Complex resources Simple biotic resources Abiotic flow resources

27. Renewable

28. Non-renewable

29. The End