A para(30lines) on introduction on ecosystems
Answers
An ecosystem consists of a community of organisms together with their physical environment.
Ecosystems can be of different sizes and can be marine, aquatic, or terrestrial. Broad categories of terrestrial ecosystems are called biomes.
In ecosystems, both matter and energy are conserved. Energy flows through the system—usually from light to heat—while matter is recycled.
Ecosystems with higher biodiversity tend to be more stable with greater resistance and resilience in the face of disturbances, disruptive events.
Introduction
What do a tide pool on the California coast and the Amazon rainforest of South America have in common? Despite being many orders of magnitude different in size, both are examples of ecosystems—communities of organisms living together in combination with their physical environment.
As a reminder, a community consists of all the populations of all the species that live together in a particular area. The concepts of ecosystem and community are closely related—the difference is that an ecosystem includes the physical environment, while a community does not. In other words, a community is the biotic, or living, component of an ecosystem. In addition to this biotic component, the ecosystem also includes an abiotic component—the physical environment.
Ecosystems can be small, such as the tide pools found near the rocky shores of many oceans, or very large, such as the Amazon Rainforest in South America. It's basically up to the ecologist studying the ecosystem to define its boundaries in a way that makes sense for their questions of interest.
What are ecosystems like?
The short answer: incredibly diverse! Not only can ecosystems vary in size, but they can also differ in just about every imaginable biotic or abiotic feature.
Some ecosystems are marine, others freshwater, and others yet terrestrial—land based. Ocean ecosystems are most common on Earth, as oceans and the living organisms they contain cover 75% of the Earth's surface. Freshwater ecosystems are the rarest, covering only 1.8% of the Earth's surface. Terrestrial, land, ecosystems cover the remainder of Earth.
Terrestrial ecosystems can be further grouped into broad categories called biomes, based largely on climate. Examples of terrestrial biomes include tropical rain forests, savannas, deserts, coniferous forests, deciduous forests, and tundra. The map below shows the broad distribution of biomes on Earth.