Physical Geography (Living World)

What are ecosystems and biomes?

• Ecosystems are a community of plants, animals and micro organisms living together. The can be small scale (pond) or large scale (rainforest).
• The world is divided up into 10 ecosystems. These large scale ecosystems are called biomes.

Biomes are large scale ecosystems which have these things in common:

1) Climate

2) Relief (hills, moutains etc)

3) Geology (rock type - limestone, chalk etc)

4) Soils

5) Vegetation (trees, flowers etc)

Tropical forests

These are found near the equator in centeral and South America as well as parts of Africa and Asia. They are not and humid and contain a huge variety of plants and animals which make around half of the world's species. The trees are mostly hard wood. the climate is called equatorial

Desert

This is the driest of the hottest areas. The world's largest deseert is in the Sahara in North Africa and they are usually found along the tropics of Cancer and Capricorn. Areas of scrub land that border the desert are called desert scrub

Temperate diciduos forests

These areas contain tres that those their leaves and around found across Europe and USA. The weather there is mild and wet. The climate is called temperate maritime.

Producers

These get their energy from the sun and convert this into chemical energy that can be used by consumers. The most obvious producers are plants. Without the engery from the sun, and the conversion by the producers, life in the ecosystem would not exist.

Consumers

There are two types of consumers: herbivores which are also known as primary consumers get their energy from eating producers which is normally plants and grass. The second is carnivores which can also be known as the secondary consumers get their energy by eating other animals

Decomposers

When plants and animals die, decomposers are responsible for transferring the nutrients from the dead plants or animals back into the ecosystem. This is known as the nutrient cycle. Decomposers break down the remaing material of an animal or plant and return it to the soil so it is now available for use again by living plants and animals.

Food chains

A food chain shows what eats what in a particular habitat. For example, grass is eaten by a vole and then the vole gets eaten by a barn owl. The arrows between each animal or plant in the chain always point in the direction of energy flow which is form the food and to the feeder.

The sun is an ultimate source of energy for most communities of living things. Green plants absorb some of the suns light energy to make their own food by photosynthesis. Other organisms in a food chain are consmers because they get all of their energy by consuming other organisms.

Food webs

When all the food chains in a habitat are joined together they form a food web. It can also show the further consequences if one species were to thrive or decline

Rain forest

Hot humid…