write an essay on water as an ecological factor
Answers
Many organisms, co-exist in an environment. The environment (surrounding) includes physical, chemical and biological components. When a component surrounding an organism affects the life of an organism, it becomes a factor. All such factors together are called environmental factors or ecological factors. These factors can be classified into living (biotic) and non-living (abiotic) which make the environment of an organism. However the ecological factors are meaningfully grouped into four classes, which are as follows:
i. Climatic factors
ii. Edaphic factors
iii. Topographic factors
iv. Biotic factors
We will discuss the above factors in a concise manner.
1. Climatic Factors
Climate is one of the important natural factors controlling the plant life. The climatic factors includes light, temperature, water, wind and fire.
a. Light
Light is a well known factor needed for the basic physiological processes of plants, such as photosynthesis, transpiration, seed germination and flowering. The portion of the sunlight which can be resolved by the human eye is called visible light. The visible part of light is made-up of wavelength from about 400 nm (violet) to 700 nm (red). The rate of photosynthesis is maximum at blue (400 – 500 nm) and red (600 – 700 nm). The green (500 – 600 nm) wave length of spectrum is less strongly absorbed by plants.
Answer:
Water is very important abiotic factor which is most demanded as it is essential for survival and is mainly used for drinking purposes and irrigation. Water has become a scarce resource. It is responsible for the maintenance of all the ecosystems on earth.
University Campuses are large entities with huge impacts on the environment and therefore on the overall urban sustainability. Water is a scarce resource worldwide and has an obvious critical situation in the Egyptian case. Water sustainability for landscape depends mainly on reduction of consumption, collection of water and recycling of water. The paper tackles the lack of care towards sustainability issues on contemporary Egyptian campuses’ design and management. The occurring initiatives are insufficient. This research aims to define a checklist for sustainable landscape measures regarding water on university campuses based on international best practice cases and literature. The study examines the state of campus landscapes in some of the contemporary campuses in Egypt and the application of sustainability criteria and measures.