EFE - Flow of Nutrients in an Ecosystem Lesson
Flow of Nutrients in an Ecosystem
Time to Recharge!
Remember that matter and energy is neither created nor destroyed. Just like energy flows through an ecosystem, matter flows through trophic levels.
There are some essential elements and compounds necessary for life, and their cycling is necessary for the support and stability of ecosystems. The nutrient atoms, ions, and molecules that organisms need to live, grow, and reproduce are continuously cycled from the nonliving environment (air, water, soil, and rock) to living organism (biotic) and then back again in what are called literally life-earth-chemical cycles commonly known as the nutrient cycles or the biogeochemical cycles.
Biogeochemical Cycles
Along with energy, water and several other chemical elements cycle through ecosystems and influence the rates at which organisms grow and reproduce. About 10 major nutrients and six trace nutrients are essential to all animals and plants, while others play important roles for selected species. The most important biogeochemical cycles affecting ecosystem health are the water, oxygen, carbon, nitrogen, and phosphorus cycles.
The Hydrologic and Carbon Cycles: Always Recycle!
Watch this video to review cycles:
Let's Recap Those Cycles
Flow of Nutrients Challenge
Before You Go, You Need to Know
The following key points are from this explore section of the lesson. You must know the following information before moving to the next lesson. This is just a summary of the key points.
- Carbon Cycle: The continuous process by which carbon is exchanged between organisms and the environment. Carbon dioxide is absorbed from the atmosphere by plants and algae and converted to carbohydrates by photosynthesis. Carbon is then passed into the food chain and returned to the atmosphere by the respiration and decay of animals, plants, and other organisms. The burning of fossil fuels also releases carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.
- Nutrient cycles or biogeochemical cycles: describe the movement of nutrients throughout ecosystems (movements between Earth's abiotic and biotic systems). The word biogeochemical is a combination of bio ("life") geo ("earth"), and chemical ("elements or compounds that cycle through the living and nonliving world".
- Nitrogen Cycle: the series of processes by which nitrogen and its compounds are interconverted in the environment and in living organisms, including nitrogen fixation and decomposition.
- Oxygen Cycle: the cycle whereby atmospheric oxygen is converted to carbon dioxide in animal respiration and regenerated by green plants in photosynthesis.
- Phosphorus cycle: Inorganic phosphates (PO 4 3− , HPO 4 2− , or H 2 PO 4 − ) are absorbed by plants from the soil and bodies of water and eventually pass into animals through food chains. Within living organisms phosphates are built up into nucleic acids and other organic molecules. When plants and animals die, phosphates are released and returned to the abiotic environment through the action of bacteria.
- Water Cycle (hydrologic cycle): the circulation of the earth's water, in which water evaporates from the sea into the atmosphere, where it condenses and falls as rain or snow, returning to the sea by rivers or returning to the atmosphere by evapotranspiration.
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