Ecosystem Concept. Levels of Organization. In ecology, the levels of organization are generally considered to refer to the following: 1. Biosphere - This is where all living things on Earth live. Humans live in a biosphere 2. Biomes - A large naturally occurring community of flora and fauna occupying a major habitat. 3. Ecosystem - A biological community of interacting organisms and their physical environment. 4. Community - All the organisms living in a particular area or place: "local communities". 5. Populations - A particular section, group, or type of people or animals living in an area or country. 6. Organism' 7. Habitat 8. Niche - rule of organisms in an area or within the environment. The ecosystem is a core concept in Biology and Ecology, serving as the level of biological organization in which organisms interact simultaneously with each other and with their environment. As such, ecosystems are a level above that of the ecological community (organisms of different species interacting with each other) but are at a level below, or equal to, biomes and the biosphere. Essentially, biomes are regional ecosystems, and the biosphere is the largest of all possible ecosystems. Ecosystems include living organisms, the dead organic matter produced by them, the abiotic environment within which the organisms live and exchange elements (soils, water, atmosphere), and the interactions between these components. Ecosystems embody the concept that living organisms continually interact with each other and with the environment to produce complex systems with emergent properties, such that "the whole is greater than the sum of its parts" and "everything is connected". The spatial boundaries, component organisms and the matter and energy content and flux within ecosystems may be defined and measured. However, unlike organisms or energy, ecosystems are inherently conceptual, in that different observers may legitimately define their boundaries and components differently. For example, a single patch of trees together with the soil, organisms and atmosphere interacting with them may define a forest ecosystem, yet the entirety of all organisms, their environment, and their interactions across an entire forested region in the Amazon might also be defined as a single forest ecosystem. Some have even called the interacting system of organisms that live within the guts of most animals as an ecosystem, despite their residence within a single organism, which violates the levels of organization definition of ecosystems. Moreover, interactions between ecosystem components are as much a part of the definition of ecosystems as their constituent organisms, matter and energy. Despite the apparent contradictions that result from the flexibility of the ecosystem concept, it is just this flexibility that has made it such a useful and enduring concept. Structure of Ecosystems: Ecosystems might be observed in a lot of ways, so there isn’t a set of components which make up an ecosystem. However, all ecosystems have to include both abiotic and biotic components, the interactions, and a known source of energy. The simplest but least representative of ecosystems therefore contains just one living plant – the biotic component, in a small terrarium with light exposure to which water source with essential nutrients for the plant’s growth has been added – the abiotic environment. The other extreme is the biosphere, which has all of Earth's organisms and the interactions between them and Earth’s systems – the abiotic environment. And of course, the majority of ecosystems fall in between the extremes of complexity. At a core functional level, ecosystems normally contain primary producers able to harvest energy from sunlight by photosynthesis and to use the energy to turn carbon dioxide with other inorganic chemicals in the organic building blocks of life. The consumers feed upon this captured energy, while decomposers not only feed on the energy, but also break up the organic matter into the inorganic constituents, for them to be used again by the producers. Those interactions among the producers and organisms which consume and decompose are called trophic interactions, composed of trophic levels in the energy pyramid, and the most energy and mass are in the primary producers, at the base, while the higher levels of the pyramid, beginning with the primary consumers that feed on primary producers, the secondary consumers which feed on these, and so forth. Trophic interactions are described in a more detailed form as the food chain, which organizes the specific organisms by the trophic distance from the primary producers, and with food webs, which map the feeding interactions between all the organisms in the ecosystem. Together, the processes of matter cycling and energy transfer are essential in finding out ecosystem function and structure and defining the kinds of interactions between the environment and its organisms. It should also be noted most ecosystems have a wide array of species, and the diversity ought to be considered part and parcel of the ecosystem structure. Categories of Organisms Producers: convert light energy into chemical energy, produce organic compounds from inorganic compounds. Primary consumers: producers feed   Secondary producers: to feed on, primary (omnivores, saprophytes, carnivores etc..)  Decomposers: feed on dead matter and debris. Returns the ecosystem all organic matter extracted from soil (fungi and bacteria). They are vital to the ecosystem Concept and Classification of Biomes Biomes/ˈbaɪoʊmz/ are climatically and geographically defined as contiguous areas with similar climatic conditions on the Earth, such as communities of plants, animals, and soil organisms,[1] and are often referred to as ecosystems. Some parts of the earth have more or less the same kind of abiotic and biotic factors spread over a large area, creating a typical ecosystem over that area. Such major ecosystems are termed as biomes. Biomes are defined by factors such as plant structures (such as trees, shrubs, and grasses), leaf types (such as broadleaf and needleleaf), plant spacing (forest, woodland, savanna), and climate. Unlike ecozones, biomes are not defined by genetic, taxonomic, or historical similarities. Biomes are often identified with particular patterns of ecological succession and climax vegetation (quasiequilibrium state of the local ecosystem). An ecosystem has many biotopes and a biome is a major habitat type. A major habitat type, however, is a compromise, as it has an intrinsic inhomogeneity. Some examples of habitats are ponds, trees, streams, creeks, under rocks and burrows in the sand or soil. The biodiversity characteristic of each extinction, especially the diversity of fauna and subdominant plant forms, is a function of abiotic factors and the biomass productivity of the dominant vegetation. In terrestrial biomes, species diversity tends to correlate positively with net primary productivity, moisture availability, and temperature.[2] Ecoregions are grouped into both biomes and ecozones. A fundamental classification of biomes are: Terrestrial (land) biomes Aquatic biomes (including freshwater biomes and marine biomes) Biomes are often known in English by local names. For example, a temperate grassland or shrubland biome is known commonly as steppe in central Asia, prairie in North America, and pampas in South America. Tropical grasslands are known as savanna in Australia, whereas in southern Africa they are known as certain kinds of veld (from Afrikaans). Sometimes an entire biome may be targeted for protection, especially under an individual nation's biodiversity action plan. Climate is a major factor determining the distribution of terrestrial biomes. Among the important climatic factors are: Latitude: Arctic, boreal, temperate, subtropical, tropical Humidity: humid, semihumid, semiarid, and arid seasonal variation: Rainfall may be distributed evenly throughout the year or be marked by seasonal variations. dry summer, wet winter: Most regions of the earth receive most of their rainfall during the summer months; Mediterranean climate regions receive their rainfall during the winter months. Elevation: Increasing elevation causes a distribution of habitat types similar to that of increasing latitude. The most widely used systems of classifying biomes correspond to latitude (or temperature zoning) and humidity. Biodiversity generally increases away from the poles towards the equator and increases with humidity. The distribution of vegetation types as a function of mean annual temperature and precipitation. In this scheme, climates are classified based on the biological effects of temperature and rainfall on vegetation under the assumption that these two abiotic factors are the largest determinants of the type of vegetation found in an area. Holdridge uses the four axes to define 30 so-called "humidity provinces", which are clearly visible in the Holdridge diagram. While his scheme largely ignores soil and sun exposure, Holdridge did acknowledge that these, too, were important factors in biome determination.

Naila Davila: CI- 23391378 esc 71
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