Environmental Biology ~ Chapter 2

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1. Water molecules are polar with a light positive charge on one side and a slight negative charge on the other side. Therefore water dissolves polar or ionic substances, including sugars and nutrients, and carries materials to and from cells.

•Nitrogen & Phosphorus

1. What are the two most important nutrients causing eutrophication in the Chesapeake Bay?

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10. Ecosystems require energy to function. From where does most of this energy come? Where does it go? •

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11. How do green plants capture energy, and what do they do with it? • Green plants are often called primary producers because they create carbohydrates and other compounds using just sunlight, air, and water.

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12. Define the terms species, population, and biological community. • Population - a group of organisms of the same species who live in the same area at the same time. Community - a group of populations living and interacting with each other in an area. Ecosystem - a community and its abiotic environment.

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13. What two problems did Arcata, California, solve with its constructed wetland? The city of Arcata, California was faced with a dilemma: Buy into an expensive regional sewage processing plant to bring their wastewater discharge into Humboldt Bay up to water quality standards, or come up with an acceptable alternative. They embarked on a pioneering journey, using wastewater to create and nourish a wetland where a logging pond and city dump had once been. The wetland provides prime wildlife habitat and recreation for the community at the same time it purifies the water.

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2. Water is the only inorganic liquid that occurs in nature under normal conditions at temperatures suitable for life. The original and predominate liquid in nature is water.

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3. Water molecules are cohesive, tending to stick together tenaciously. Water has the highest surface tension of any common, natural liquid. Water also adheres to surfaces. As a result, water is subject to capillary action: it can be drawn into small channels. Without capillary action, movement of water and nutrients into groundwater reservoirs and through living organisms might not be possible.

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3. Your body contains vast numbers of carbon atoms. How is it possible that some of these carbons may have been part of the body of a prehistoric creature? By Conservation of Matter ~ Matter exists in three distinct states. Solid, liquid, gas

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4. List six unique properties of water. Describe, briefly, how each of these properties makes water essential to life as we know it. • Water can exists as ice (solid), liquid water, or water vapor (gas)

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4. Water is unique in that it expands when it crystallizes. Most substances shrink as they change from liquid to solid. Ice floats because it is less dense than liquid water. When temperatures fall below freezing, the surface layers of lakes, rivers, and ocean cool faster and freeze before deeper water. Floating ice then insulates underlying layers, keeping most water bodies liquid ( and aquatic organisms alive) throughout the winter in most places. Without this feature, many aquatic systems would freeze solid in the winter.

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5. Water has a high heat of vaporization, using a great deal of heat to convert from liquid to vapor. Consequently, evaporating water is an effective way for organisms to shed excess heat. Many animals pant or sweat to moisten evaporative cooling surfaces. Comfort of a hot humid day verses a hot dry day is water-vapor-laden air inhibition rate of evaporation from skin surface, impairing the ability to shed heat.

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6. A. Explain the difference between high-quality and low-quality energy. • Heat storage in ocean is essential to moderating climates and maintaining biological communities. It is immense but hard to capture therefore low quality.

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6. The oceans store a vast amount of heat, but this huge reservoir of energy is of little use to humans.

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6. Water also has a high specific heat; that is, a great deal of heat is absorbed before it changes temperature. The slow response of water to temperature change helps moderate global temperatures, keeping the environment warm in winter and cool in the summer. This effect is especially noticeable near the ocean, but it is important globally.

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7. In the biosphere, matter follows circular pathways, while energy flows in a linear fashion. Explain. • Biosphere Matter cycles are a natural product of evolution. If one type of life form consumes one kind of matter and produces another (e.g. plants breathing CO2 and breathing out O2) then this produces an abundance of the second kind of matter, which is a great opportunity for another life form to thrive that consumes it and produces another kind of matter (e.g. animals breathing O2 and breathing out CO2). So in the biosphere, cycles get more and more complex as new life forms evolve that consume the abundant waste products of others (including a life form that consumes all of the abundant carbon deposits left from billions of years of life, and burns it back into the atmosphere).

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8. Which wavelengths do our eyes respond to, and why? (Refer to fig. 2.13) About how long are short ultraviolet wavelengths compared to microwave lengths? • Specific wavelengths within the spectrum correspond to a specific color based upon how humans typically perceive light of that wavelength. The long wavelength end of the spectrum corresponds to light that is perceived by humans to be red and the short wavelength end of the spectrum corresponds to light that is perceived to be violet. Other colors within the spectrum include orange, yellow, green and blue.

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9. Where do extremophiles live? How do they get the energy they need for survival? • Deep in the Earth's crust or deep on the ocean floor and in hot springs we find Extremophiles, organisms that gain their energy from chemosynthesis, or extracting energy from inorganic chemical compounds such as hydrogen sulfide (H2S). These ecosystems cluster around thermal vents; cracks where boiling-hot water, heated by magma in the earth's crust, escaping from the ocean floor, these microorganisms grow by oxidizing hydrogen sulfide. Bacteria support an ecosystem that includes blind shrimp, giant tube worms, hairy crabs, strange clams, and other unusual organisms. They are interesting because of their contrast to the incredible profusion of photosynthesis-based life on the earth's surface.

•2. What are systems and how do feedback loops regulate them? •

A cycle network of interdependent processes ~ energy flow

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A positive Feedback Loop tends to increase a process or component where a negative decreases it.

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Characteristics are Open system receiving and producing outside of the system, like a rain cloud and rain fall; or Closed System a closed system would be isolated like an island.

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Energy flows in a one way path made up of varied length waves.

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Energy types and measurements Kinetic Energy is contained in moving objects, a rock rolling down hill, the wind blowing through the trees, water flowing over the dam.

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Eutrophication Eutrophication, or nutrient pollution, is a major environmental concern for lakes, tributaries, rivers, estuaries and coastal waters. Eutrophication refers to an increase in nutrients, especially nitrogen and phosphorus, which leads to an explosive increase in the growth of algae, called algal blooms. Eutrophication also includes the increased input of sedimentary material. There are two types of eutrophication: natural and cultural. Furthermore, there are two types of sources for the nutrients and sedimentary materials: point and nonpoint.

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Eutrophication can lead to an increase in phytoplankton biomass and algal blooms. This can result in decreased water clarity, a reduction in sunlight penetration and a decrease in oxygen levels, known as anoxia. Anoxia can cause the death of fish and other aquatic organisms. Algal blooms can also be hazardous to both humans and animals. These blooms can release neurotoxins, hepatoxins, dermatoltoxins, gastrointestinal toxins and cytotoxins. Algal blooms are responsible for red tides, brown tides and Pfiesteria.

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Healthy coral reefs often have inverted pyramids

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High Quality Energy is intense, concentrated and high in temperature.

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Low Quality Energy is diffused, dispersed, and low in temperature.

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Most ecosystems can be visualized as a pyramid with many organisms in the lowest trophic levels and only a few individuals at the top. Give an example of an inverted numbers pyramid relating to the ecosystem?

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Our eyes are sensitive to visible-light wavelengths. These are mid spectrum between Gamma Rays and Radio Waves.

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Over centuries, gradual buildup of nutrients, sediments and organic material begin to fill many lake basins. As the lakes become more eutrophic, they are able to support more living organisms, including damaging algae, as a result of higher nutrient levels. At the same time, their littoral area increases as a result of sedimentary buildup. Eventually, this process not only affects the water quality but allows colonization by terrestrial vegetation in the expanding shallows. The length of this process depends on the characteristics of the lake basin, the watershed and the climate.

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Point sources are definitive, localized sources of nutrients and sedimentary pollution. A primary point source is municipal and industrial wastewater runoff. Additional point sources include runoff and leaching from waste disposal systems, animal feedlots, hog and chicken farming operations and industrial sites. Large construction sites are also a frequent point source for sedimentary runoff. Nonpoint sources are diffuse sources of nutrients and sedimentary pollution. A primary nonpoint source of eutrophication is runoff from agriculture and pastures. Other possible nonpoint sources include runoff from urban areas without sewer systems and abandoned mines, as well as leaching from septic tanks. Atmospheric deposition is another source of nonpoint eutrophication.

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Short wave are 0.0nm compared to Radio wave 10cm

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The First Law of Thermodynamics: Energy is conserved, it is never created nor destroyed it may be transformed but the total amount does not change.

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The Second Law of Thermodynamic: states with each successive energy transfer in a system, less energy is available to do work; it is degraded to a lower quality form or it is dissipated and is lost. Recognize that disorder or entropy tends to increase in all natural systems.

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The alteration of nutrient input to water basins by human activity can dramatically increase eutrophication, leading to major ecological changes in decades, rather than centuries. Cultural eutrophication is primarily associated with phosphorus, which is found in fertilizers and partially treated sewage. Phosphorus has been found to be one of the strongest stimulators of algae growth. One of the primary sources of man-caused sedimentary eutrophication is soil erosion caused by the removal of trees and vegetation. The health of aquatic habitats is directly tied to the human activity that takes place throughout the entirety of their watersheds, requiring effective land management and environmental policy.

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The principle substances we consider in ecosystems Water, carbon, nitrogen, phosphorus, and sulfur.

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Ultraviolet 10nm Microwaves 1mm

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Why are big fierce animals rare? 1. Large, fierce animals usually require alot of space, therefore, they have to keep themselves spread out, or else they will fight until they die to get a territory of their own. This means, for example, that if tigers only lived in Africa, and the total population of tigers that Africa could hold was one hundred, then that number is all you would have due to the territory issue.

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Why is there so much less energy in each succession of trophic level? Some of the food that organisms eat is undigested and doesn't provide usable energy.

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•5. What is DNA, and why is it important?

• Nucleotides complex molecules made up of one or more phosphate group and a nitrogen containing base. Signaling molecule & source of energy within cells.

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• The trophic level of an organism is the position it occupies in a food chain. The word trophic derives from the Greek τροφή(trophē) referring to food or feeding. A food chain represents a succession of organisms that eat another organism and are, in turn, eaten themselves. The number of steps an organism is from the start of the chain is a measure of its trophic level. Food chains start at trophic level 1 with primary producers such as plants, move to herbivores at level 2, predators at level 3 and typically finish with carnivores or apex predators at level 4 or 5. The path along the chain can form either a one-way flow or a food "web". Ecological communities with higher biodiversity form more complex trophic paths.