FRESHWATER ECOSYSTEM

1. FRESHWATER ECOSYSTEM LAKSHMI

2. Established goal/standard • Students will understand how and why organisms are dependent on one another and their environments.

3. Enduring understanding • Humans beings live within the world’s ecosystems. Humans modify ecosystems and the changes may be detrimental to humans.

4. Skills • Use appropriate tools and techniques to make observations, gather data, and organize information (tables and charts). • Use mathematical operations to analyze and interpret data • Identify and construct appropriate graphs illustrating the relationship between variables • Apply computer-based tools to present and research information. •   Can apply classroom knowledge to real world data.

5. Essential questions • How can water temperature influence the plants and animals in an aquatic ecosystem? • What are some differences between standing water ecosystems and running water ecosystems? • What is the “photic zone”? Why is it called the “layer of life”? • What happens if dissolved oxygen levels in a pond get too low? • What impacts have humans had on freshwater ecosystems? • Why do you think that wetlands were once considered to be wastelands? • Why are all the organisms in an ecosystem interdependent?

6. Students will understand • The presence of specific organisms in a freshwater habitat determines the quality of that habitat. • 2.An organism’s behavior and adaptations relate to its habitat. • 3.Freshwater habitats have different characteristics depending on whether water is still or moving.

7. Students understand • Stability in an ecosystem is a balance between competing effects. • Humans modify ecosystems as a result of population growth, technology, and consumption. Human destruction of habitat through direct harvesting, pollution, atmospheric changes, and other factors is threatening current global stability, and if not addressed, ecosystems will be irreversibly affected. • Natural ecosystems provide an array of basic processes that affect humans. Those processes include maintenance of the quality of the atmosphere, generation of soils, control of the hydrologic cycle, disposal of wastes, and recycling of nutrients. Humans are changing many of these basic processes, and the changes may be detrimental to humans. • Human activities can enhance potential for hazards. Acquisition of resources, urban growth, and waste disposal can accelerate rates of natural change.

8. Learning activities • Students examine pond water to determine abiotic factors (temperature, dissolved oxygen, pH) and biotic factors (microorganisms). • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jBgDeG0kzCQ • Eutrophication • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AvigoZgYbT4&feature=related • Algal Bloom/red algae

9. Portfolio Project • Observe an aquatic ecosystem near your school or home. This ecosystem can be as simple as a pond or stream or as complex as a lake or estuary. Observe the type of plants and animals in the aquatic ecosystem. Record any interaction among these organisms that you observe. When you have recorded all of your data and observations, write a one page report on the aquatic ecosystem.

10. Introduction • Depending upon the amount of dissolved salts the water contains, aquatic ecosystems are divided into freshwater ecosystems and marine ecosystem. • Freshwater ecosystems include the lakes and ponds, and the moving waters of rivers and streams. They also include areas where land known as a wetland, is periodically under water. • Marine ecosystems include the diverse coastal areas of marshes, swamps, and coral reefs as well as the deep, vast oceans.

11. Factors that determine the organisms living in a particular depth of water are • Temperature • Sunlight • Oxygen • Nutrient

12. Groups of aquatic organisms • Planktons are the organisms that float near the surface of the water. Two types of plankton are microscopic plants called phytoplankton, and microscopic animals called zooplankton. Phytoplankton produce most of the food for an aquatic ecosystem.

13. Aquatic organisms • Nekton are free-swimming organisms, such as fish, turtles, and whales.

14. Benthos • Benthos are bottom-dwelling organisms, such as mussels, worms, and barnacles. Many benthic organisms live attached to hard surfaces.

15. Zones in a lake

16. Littoral zone • It is nutrient rich and found near the shore. • Aquatic life is diverse and abundant. • Plants such as cattails and reeds, are rooted in the mud underwater, and their upper leaves and stems emerge above the water. Plants that have floating leaves, such as pond lilies, are rooted here. • cattails

17. --- • In the open water (limnetic zone), plants, algae, and some bacteria capture solar energy to make their own food during photosynthesis. • Some bodies of fresh water have areas so deep that there is too little light for photosynthesis. Bacteria live in the deep areas of the fresh water to decompose dead plants and animals that drift down from the land and water above. Fish adapted to cooler, darker water also live here. Eventually, dead and decaying organisms reach the benthic zone, the bottom of a pond or a lake, which is inhabited by decomposers, insect larvae, and clams.

18. Adaptations of organisms to their habitat • Water beetles use the hairs under their bodies to trap surface air so that they can breathe during their dives for food. • Whiskers help catfish sense food as they swim over dark lake bottoms. • In regions where lakes partially freeze in winter, amphibians burrow into the littoral mud to avoid freezing temperatures.

19. Eutrophication • Eutrophication is an increase in the amount of nutrients in an aquatic ecosystem. A lake that has large amount of plant growth due to nutrients, is known as a eutrophic lake. As the amount of plants and algae grows, the number of bacteria feeding on the decaying organisms also grows. These bacteria use the oxygen dissolved in the lake’s waters. Eventually, the reduced amount of oxygen kills oxygen loving organisms. Do you know what the lake is called when it is low in nutrients?

20. HOW NUTRIENTS AFFECT LAKESEUTROPHICATION • Eutrophication is an increase in the amount of nutrients in an aquatic ecosystem. A lake that has large amount of plant growth due to nutrients as shown in the above two pictures is known as eutrophic lake. As the amount of plants and algae grows, the number of bacteria feeding on the decaying organisms also grows. These bacteria use the dissolved oxygen in the lake’s waters. As a result, the reduced amount of oxygen kills oxygen loving organisms. • Lakes naturally becomes eutrophic over a long period of time. However, eutrophication can be accelerated by runoff. Runoff is precipitation, such as rain, that can carry sewage, fertilizers, or animal wastes from land into bodies of water.

21. Eutrophic lakes

22. Eutrophic and oligotrophci lakes

23. Freshwater wetlands Marsh Swamp

24. Environmental functions of Wetlands • Wetlands act as filters or sponges because they absorb and remove pollutants from the water that flows through them. Therefore, wetlands improve the water quality of lakes, rivers, and reservoirs downstream. • Wetlands control flooding by absorbing extra water when river overflow, which protects farms and urban and residential areas from damage. • Buffering shorelines against erosion. • Providing spawning grounds and habitats for commercially important fish and shellfish. • Providing habitat for rare, threatened, and endangered plants and animals. • Providing recreational areas for activities such as fishing, bird watching, hiking, canoeing, photography, and painting. • Provide home for native and migratory wildlife, including the blue herons. • Wetlands vegetation traps carbon that would otherwise be released as carbon dioxide, which may be linked to rising atmospheric temperatures. • Some wetlands are used to provide many commercially important products, such as cranberries.

25. How can one identify wetland? • Do you know plants in wetlands are hydrophylic? • What do you think above natural Vs. Constructed wetlands?

26. Habitat for Heron Spawning ground for fish Endangered species of freshwater wetland Common Loon Florida Everglades

27. Marshes • The Florida Everglades is the largest freshwater wetland in the United States. Freshwater marshes tend to occur on low, flat lands, and have little water movement. In shallow waters plants such as reeds, rushes, and cattails, root themselves in the rich bottom sediments. The leaves of these and other plants stick out above the surface of the water year-round. • The benthic zones of marshes are rich in nutrients and contain plants, numerous types of decomposers, and scavengers.

28. Adaptations • Water fowl, such as grebes and ducks, have flat beaks adapted for sifting through the water for fish and insects. • Water birds, such as herons, have spear like beaks that they use to grasp small fish and to probe for frogs buried in the mud. Spearlike beak helps the heron to grasp the fish and to probe for frog buried in the mud. Marshes also attract migratory birds from temperate and tropical habitats.

29. Swamps • Swamps occur on flat, poorly drained land often near streams. Swamps are dominated by woody shrubs or water loving trees, depending on the latitude and climate in which the swamps are located. • Mangrove swamps occur in warm latitudes near the ocean, so their water is salty. The American alligator living in a swamp

30. Freshwater swamps are the ideal habitat for many amphibians, such as the frogs and salamanders, because of the continuously moist environment. •  Swamps also attract birds, such as wood ducks, that nest in hollow trees near or over the water. Reptiles, such as the American Alligator are the predators of swamps and will eat almost any organism that crosses their path.

31. Human impact on wetlands • Wetlands were previously considered to be waste lands that provide breeding grounds for insects. Therefore, many have been drained, filled, and cleared for farms or residential and commercial development. • For example, the Florida Everglades once covered 8 million acres of South Florida but it now covers less than 2 million acres. • The important role of wetlands has now been well recognized. Law and the federal government protect many wetlands, and most states now prohibit the destruction of certain wetlands.

32. Rivers • Many rivers originate from snowmelt in mountains. At its headwaters, a river is usually cold and full of oxygen and runs swiftly through a shallow riverbed. As a river flows down a mountain, a river may broaden, become warmer, wider, and slower, and decrease in oxygen. • A river changes with the land and the climate through which it flows. Runoff, for example, may wash nutrients and sediments from the surrounding land into a river. These nutrients affect the growth and health of the organisms in the river.

33. Rivers Wide channels downstream Narrow headwaters

34. Life in a river • Near the churning headwaters, mosses anchor themselves to rocks by using rootlike structures called rhizoids. Planktons do not live in the headwaters because the current is too strong for them to float. However, trout and minnows are adapted to the cold, oxygen- rich headwaters.

35. Animals and their adaptations • trout and minnows are adapted to the cold, oxygen- rich headwaters. Trout are powerful swimmers and have streamlined bodies that present little resistance to the strong current. • Plankton can float in the warmer, calmer waters. Other plants, such as the crowfoot, set roots, down in the river’s rich sediment. • The leaves of some plants, such as the arrowhead, will vary in shape according to the strength of a river’s current. • Fish such as catfish and carp live in the calmer waters.

36. Rivers in danger • Rivers in danger • Industries use river water in manufacturing processes and as receptacles for waste. • For many years, people have used rivers to dispose of their sewage and garbage. These particles have polluted rivers with toxins, which have killed river organisms and made river fish inedible. • Today, runoff from the land puts pesticides and other poisons into rivers and coats riverbeds with toxic sediments. • Dams also alter the ecosystems in and around a river. • Can you add to this list?