Earth – Life Support System

Ecosystem Components

Energy flow in ecosystem

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 Earth’s Life-Support System
The earth’s life-support system consists of four
main spherical systems that interact with one
another

1. Atmosphere (air),

2. Hydrosphere (water),

3. Geosphere (rock, soil, and sediment)

4. Biosphere (living things)

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 Earth’s Life-Support System

Atmosphere
The atmosphere is a thin spherical envelope of
gases surrounding the earth’s surface.

(a) Troposphere- Extends to about 17 kilometers

above sea level
7 kilometers at north and south poles

It contains air that we breathe,

consisting
nitrogen (78%) and oxygen (21%).
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 Earth’s Life-Support System
Atmosphere
(a) Troposphere-It contains air that we breathe,
consisting nitrogen (78%) and oxygen (21%).

The remaining 1% of the air includes water vapor, carbon dioxide,

d methane, all of which are called greenhouse gases, which abs
d release energy that warms the lower atmosphere.

Without these gases, the earth would be too cold for the
istence of life

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 Earth’s Life-Support System

Atmosphere
The atmosphere is a thin spherical envelope of
gases surrounding the earth’s surface.

Stratosphere- 17–50 kilometers above the earth’s

surface,
Its lower portion holds enough ozone
(O3) gas

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 Earth’s Life-Support System

Hydrosphere
The Hydrosphere consists of all of the water on
or near the earth’s surface

It is found as water vapor in the atmosphere, liquid

water on the surface and underground, and ice—
polar ice, icebergs, glaciers, and ice in frozen soil

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 Earth’s Life-Support System
Geosphere

The Geosphere consists of

the earth’s intensely hot core,
a thick mantle composed
mostly
of rock, and a thin outer crust

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 Earth’s Life-Support System
Biosphere

The biosphere consists of the

parts of the atmosphere,
hydrosphere, and geosphere
where life is found.

One important goal of

environmental science is to
understand the interactions
that occur within this thin
layer of air, water, soil, and
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organisms.
 Factors Sustain the Earth’s Life

1. The one-way flow of high-quality energy from the

sun,

2. The cycling of nutrients

3. Biodiversity

4. Gravity,
which allows the planet to hold onto its atmosphere
and helps to enable the movement and cycling of
chemicals through air, water, soil, and organisms.

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 Sun, Earth, Life, and Climate
• Only a very small amount of this output of energy
reaches the earth—a tiny sphere in the vastness of
space.

• The solar energy that reaches the atmosphere lights

the earth during daytime, warms the air, and
evaporates and cycles water through the biosphere

• Much of the high-quality solar radiation that reaches

our planet is reflected by its atmosphere back into space
as lower-quality energy in the form of longer-wavelength
infrared radiation.

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 Sun, Earth, Life, and Climate

As this infrared radiation travels back from the

earth’s surface into the lower atmosphere, it encounters
greenhouse gases

greenhouse gas molecules to vibrate and release

nfrared radiation with even longer wavelengths. The
vibrating gaseous molecules then have higher kinetic energy
which helps to warm the lower atmosphere and the earth’s
surface.

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• Ecology is the science that focuses on how
organisms interact with one another and with
their non-living environment of matter and
energy.
• Ecologists study interactions within and among
five of
these levels—

1. organisms
2. populations
3. communities
4. ecosystems
5. biosphere 13
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 What Are the Major Components of an Ecosystem

Ecosystems have

1. Living component (biotic)

e.g. plants, animals, microbes, and all
other organisms.

2. Non-living components (abiotic)

e.g., water, air, nutrients, rocks, heat, and
solar
energy

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 What Are the Major Components of an Ecosystem

1. Living component (biotic)

e.g. plants, animals, microbes, and all
other organisms.

Ecologists assign every type of organism in an

ecosystem to a trophic (feeding) level, depending on
its source of food or nutrients.

1. Producers
Primary consumers

2. Consumers Secondary consumers

Tertiary consumers
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3. Decomposers
 What Are the Major Components of an Ecosystem

Living component (biotic)

1. Producers

Producers, sometimes called autotrophs (self-feeders),

make the nutrients they need from compounds
and energy obtained from their environment

Through a process called chemosynthesis, a few

producers, mostly specialized bacteria, can convert
simple inorganic compounds from their environment 17

into more complex nutrient compounds without using

 What Are the Major Components of an Ecosystem

Living component (biotic)

2. Consumers
• consumers,or heterotrophs (“other-feeders”), that cannot
produce the nutrients they need through photosynthesis
or other processes.

• All consumers (including humans) depend on

producers
for their nutrients.

Primary consumers, or herbivores (plant

eaters), are animals that eat mostly green
plants.
Examples are caterpillars, giraffes
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 What Are the Major Components of an Ecosystem

Living component (biotic)

2. Consumers

• Secondary consumers (or Carnivores), are

animals that feed on the flesh of other
animals
Examples are spiders, lions

• Tertiary (or higher-level) consumers that feed on

the
primary and secondary consumers.

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• Omnivores eat both plants and other
animals.
 What Are the Major Components of an Ecosystem

Living component (biotic)

3. Decomposers

Decomposers (detritivores) are consumers that, in the

process of obtaining their own nutrients, release
nutrients from the wastes or remains of plants and
animals and then return those nutrients to the soil,
water, and air for reuse by producers

Examples are Bacteria and fungi

Without decomposers, the planet would be

overwhelmed with plant litter, animal wastes, dead
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animal bodies, and garbage.
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 What Are the Major Components of an Ecosystem

Living component (biotic)

aerobic respiration

• In most cells, energy is released by aerobic respiration,

which
uses oxygen to convert glucose (or other organic nutrient
molecules) back into carbon dioxide and water

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 What Are the Major Components of an Ecosystem

Living component (biotic)

anaerobic respiration

• Some decomposers get the energy they need by breaking

down glucose (or other organic compounds) in the absence
of oxygen. This form of cellular respiration is called
anaerobic respiration, or fermentation

• end products for this process are methane, ethanol, acetic

acid
and hydrogen sulfide.

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Earth – Life Support System
Atmosphere (air),
Hydrosphere (water),
Geosphere (rock, soil, and sediment)
Biosphere (living things)

Ecosystem Components
Living component (biotic)
Non-living components (abiotic)

Energy flow in ecosystem 24

 What Happens to Energy in an Ecosystem?

Energy Flows through Ecosystems in Food Chains

and food webs

Food Chains

A sequence of organisms, each of which serves as a

source of food or energy for the next, is called a food
chain.

Food chain determines how chemical energy and nutrients

move along the same pathways from one organism to
another through the trophic levels in an ecosystem
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Every use and transfer of energy by organisms involves
a loss of some degraded high-quality energy to the
environment as heat (low-quality energy)
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 What Happens to Energy in an Ecosystem?

Energy Flows through Ecosystems in Food Chains

and food webs

Food webs

organisms in most ecosystems form a complex network of

interconnected food chains called a food web

Food chains and webs show how producers, consumers,

and decomposers are connected to one another as
energy flows through trophic levels in an ecosystem
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 What Happens to Energy in an Ecosystem?

Usable Energy Decreases with Each Link in a

Food Chain or Web

• In a food chain or web, chemical energy stored in

biomass is transferred from one trophic level to
another.

• As energy flows through ecosystems in food

chains and webs, there is a decrease in the
amount of high-quality chemical energy
available to organisms at each succeeding
feeding level

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 Gross primary productivity (GPP)

• Gross primary productivity (GPP) is the rate at

which an ecosystem’s producers (usually plants)
convert solar energy into chemical energy in the
form of biomass found in their tissues.

• GPP is usually measured in terms of energy

production per unit area over a given time span,
such as kilocalories per square meter per year
(kcal/m2/yr).

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 Net primary productivity
(NPP)
• Net primary productivity (NPP) is the rate at which
producers use photosynthesis to produce and store
chemical energy minus the rate at which they use
some of this stored chemical energy through aerobic
respiration

• NPP measures how fast producers can make the

chemical
energy that is stored in their tissues and that is
potentially available to other organisms (consumers) in
an ecosystem.

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 Net primary productivity
(NPP)

• On land, tropical rain forests have a very high

net
primary productivity because of their large
number and variety of producer trees and other
plants.

• When such forests are cleared or burned to

plant
Crops, there is a sharp drop in the net primary
productivity and a loss of many of the diverse
array of plant and animal species.

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 Net primary productivity
(NPP)
• As we have seen, producers are the source of all nutrients
in an ecosystem that are available for the producers
themselves and for the consumers and decomposers that
feed on them.

• Only the biomass represented by NPP is available as

nutrients for consumers, and they use only a portion of
this amount.

• Thus, the planet’s NPP ultimately limits the number of

consumers (including humans) that can survive on the
earth.
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