Energy & Ecosystems
- Created by: beth-marie2511
- Created on: 20-06-16 22:16
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- Energy & Ecosystems
- Transfer of energy in an ecosystem
- A food chain shows how energy is transferred from one living organism to another
- The level at which an organism feeds is their 'trophic' level
- Food Webs
- Living organisms are usually part of more than one food chain
- They feed at different trophic levels in different chains
- Forming the food chains into food webs to understand energy flow in an ecosystem
- Living organisms are usually part of more than one food chain
- Efficiency of Energy Transfer
- Energy flow is very inefficient
- Energy is lost from the food chain at each trophic level and is therefore unavailable to the next organism in the chain
- Energy is lost as heat due to respiration
- Some energy remains stored in dead organisms and waste material
- This energy is then only available to decomposers
- Only approximately 10% of the energy ends up as herbivore biomass
- Carnivores are more efficient at energy transfer because they are more efficient at digesting their high protein diets
- Energy loss can also be because of movement / muscle contraction
- There tends to be no more than 5 trophic levels within a chain because there would not be enough energy to sustain a further trophic level
- Photo-synthetic Efficiency
- The measure of how well a plant is able to capture light energy and convert it into chemical energy
- The energy flow from one organism to another originates from sunlight
- GPP = Gross Primary Productivity
- The total energy transferred/ fixed by a plant
- A substantial amount of GPP is respired by the plant.
- What's left over is known as NPP - Net Primary Production
- It represents the potential food available to primary consumers - in plants this may be as low as 1%
- What's left over is known as NPP - Net Primary Production
- Transfer of energy in an ecosystem
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