1. Living Things and the Environment
Practical Science II
Chapter 11

2. What is Ecology?
Environment – everything that surrounds an organism and acts upon it
Interact – process of organisms acting upon one another or on the nonliving parts of their environment
Ecology – the study of the relationships and interactions between organisms and all the living/nonliving parts of their environment

3. Why is ecology important?
Earth’s resources limited
Medicines, e.g., tropical rainforests
Understanding nutrient cycling—slash & burn, agriculture
Rise in greenhouse gases—climate change (CO2, CFCs, CH4)
Tropical Rainforests and greenhouse gases
To sum: basic ecology for maintaining ecosystem functioning
Sustainability—e.g., fisheries. END OF LECTURE.

4. Biosphere
Zone of the earth which supports life, including parts of the:
Lithosphere (solid earth)
Hydrosphere (water bodies)
Atmosphere (envelope of air)

6. What is a Population?
All of the same kind of organism (species) living in the same place
All the deer in the Olympic National Park; all the tadpoles in Kilpisjarvi; all the hawks on the Rathdrum Prairie

7. What is a Community?
All the different populations living in the same place
All the trees in Post Falls; a mangrove forest community; the grasses on the Rathdrum Prairie

8. What is an Ecosystem?
A group of communities interacting with each other and the non-living parts

9. Habitat
Where an organism lives
A physical place or type of place

10. Niche An organism’s role in the environment
Producer, consumer (herbivore/carnivore), saprovore (scavenger/ decomposer)

11. Learn to share! Organisms can share the same habitat How?
Timing their activities
Birds eat daytime insects in forest
Bats eat nighttime insects in same forest
By occupying different niches
They don’t compete with each other
They complete each other

12. Are there limits?
Limiting factors – conditions in an environment that place controls on how large a population can be
Rainfall, sunlight, and soil limit numbers and kinds of plants in an area
Temperature, water, food supply (# & kind of plants?), and shelter (plants again?) limit the animal populations

13. Obviously there are limits!
The largest population that can be supported by an area is its carrying capacity

14. In real life…….

15. What is a Biome?
A large region with a characteristic climate and plant/animal communities
Marine/Aquatic
Tundra/Polar
coniferous
Deciduous/chapparal
Plain/prairie/savanna

18. What is a climatogram?
Summarizes temperature and precipitation averages for a biome/location

19. Abiotic vs Biotic

20. Air
Rock
Water
Trees
Prairie Dog
Log cabin
Snow
Grass
Dirt

21. Hierarchy of Life

22. Succession A slow change in organism populations
Change in dominant organisms

23. Pond Succession

24. Pond Succession

25. What are natural resources?
Materials from nature which man uses to survive and better his condition
Renewable – can be reused or replaced
Nonrenewable – finite amount and cannot be replaced
Conservation – wise use of resources to extend their availability

26. CLASSIFICATION OF NATURAL RESOURCES
NON-RENEWABLE
RENEWABLE
Recyclable
Non-
recyclable
UNCONDITIONALLY RENEWABLE
CONDITIONALLY RENEWABLE
Abiotic cycling resources
Complex
resources
Simple biotic
resources
Abiotic flow resources

27. Renewable

28. Non-renewable

29. The End