About the Book
Please note that the content of this book primarily consists of articles available from Wikipedia or other free sources online. Pages: 92. Chapters: Anthroposystem, Aquatic ecosystem, Biogeochemistry, Business ecosystem, Climax community, Climax species, Climax vegetation, Closed ecological system, Controlled Ecological Life Support System, Cross-boundary subsidy, Current solar income, DayCent, Earth systems engineering and management, Ecological indicator, Ecosystem diversity, Ecosystem ecology, Ecosystem engineer, Ecosystem model, Ecosystem services, Ecosystem valuation, Effective evolutionary time, Embodied energy, Emergy synthesis, Energy Systems Language, Environmental consulting, Environmental resources management, F-ratio, Food chain, Functional group (ecology), Functional response, Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, Habitat, Habitat corridor, Industrial ecology, Integrated Biosphere Simulator, International Arctic Research Center, Knowledge ecosystem, Landscape ecology, Land Surface Model (LSM version 1.0), Large marine ecosystem, Liebig's law of the minimum, List of permaculture projects, Lithosphere, Macroecology, Material flow, Mineral cycle, Nature Farming, Nestedness, Novel ecosystem, Nutrient cycle, Occupancy frequency distribution, Oceanic lithosphere, Permaforestry, Rank abundance curve, Rapoport's rule, Subsurface Lithoautotrophic Microbial Ecosystem, Sustainability and environmental management, Synthetic ecosystems, Trophic species, Urban ecosystem, Wildlife corridor. Excerpt: An ecosystem is a community of living organisms (plants, animals and microbes) in conjunction with the nonliving components of their environment (things like air, water and mineral soil), interacting as a system. These biotic and abiotic components are regarded as linked together through nutrient cycles and energy flows. As ecosystems are defined by the network of interactions among organisms, and between organisms and their environment, they can come in any size but usually encompass specific, limited spaces (although some scientists say that the entire planet is an ecosystem). Energy, water, nitrogen and soil minerals are other essential abiotic components of an ecosystem. The energy that flows through ecosystems is obtained primarily from the sun. It generally enters the system through photosynthesis, a process that also captures carbon from the atmosphere. By feeding on plants and on one another, animals play an important role in the movement of matter and energy through the system. They also influence the quantity of plant and microbial biomass present. By breaking down dead organic matter, decomposers release carbon back to the atmosphere and facilitate nutrient cycling by converting nutrients stored in dead biomass back to a form that can be readily used by plants and other microbes. Ecosystems are controlled both by external and internal factors. External factors such as climate, the parent material which forms the soil and topography, control the overall structure of an ecosystem and the way things work within it, but are not themselves influenced by the ecosystem. Other external factors include time and potential biota. Ecosystems are dynamic entities-invariably, they are subject to periodic disturbances and are in the process of recovering from some past disturbance. Ecosystems in similar environments that are located in different parts of the world can end up doing things very differently simply because they have different pools of species present. The i
