Chad Prescod 06/12/10

Biology

Nutrient Cycle – page 185

1. Above ground would have the plants that absorb the nutrients from the soil and roots
below the ground and would be available for consumers to eat.
2. The biome with the largest above ground compartment is the equatorial forest.
3. It is hard to grow crops in area where equatorial forest ha been cleared of its vegetation
because its nutrients are stored mainly above ground and there would be a shortage of
nutrients for the organisms in the ecosystem to survive off ot.
4. Decomposers and detritus feeders eat dead matter and change the nutrients back into
their inorganic form, releasing back into the atmosphere through respiration and
excretion.
5. Most of the nitrogen in a tundra is in the soil because it is an area with rich soil and little
vegetation.
6. Warming is due to the climate change that might cause a release of Carbon dioxide
because it is warming the soil and allowing the carbon dioxide to move more easily
through the soil and release into the atmosphere.

Release of Carbon from Tundra Soils – page 186

1. A. When the soil is moist there was carbon released from the soil especially when it was
at 15 degrees which was 15 % higer than the 7 degree moist soil.
B. The heat allows the carbon to be evaporated eaiser, the higher the heat is the
fastere the carbon evaporates allowing more to be released in the same amount of
time.
2. A. When the soil is moist, more carbon is released but when too wet, less carbon is
released into the atmosphere.

3. The fertilizer basically allows more carbon to be released than the soil without fertilizing,

especially in the moist soil as those with fertilizer in moist soil have the most carbon is
released.

4. The moistness of the water impacts the release of carbon the greatest, the soil that is moist

releases the most carbon .
Phenology - page 188 1. A. The leaves opened the earliest in 1999.

B) The mean temperature is the lowest in 1994.

2.

 A) When the temperature is warmer the leaves open earlier, when the temperature is around

0 the leaves open at the mean and when the temperature is colder the leaves open later.

B) The graph shows the increase in heat at the same time of year. In 1970 the temperature was
low at -2 in March and April but it gradually increased to +2 in 1980 and then got even

 
higher at +3 in 2000, this shows that year by year the heat is increasing showing that thereis
evidence of global warming toward the end of the 20th century.

Page 191

A. The drought index remained high from 1990-2000 and in 1965-1970B)

B. I)

ii) The reasons for the differences are that in the 1970s the air was more cool and

moist so beetles were not able to survive long enough to carry out their life cycle,
however in the1990s the temperature spiked to very warm and dry conditions allowing
the beetle to survive and complete its lifecycle. And breed again as they live in
warm temperatures.
C. Looking at the graph, there was a drop in the beetles in 200 down to about 250
from2000. This could be caused by a drop in temperature for a year or two, however
based on global warming one would assume that due to the extra heating of the
atmosphere, the mean temperature will rise causing the beetles to have another
outbreak as there was in the 1990s. This would lead to extreme damage comparing to
the 400,000 hectares of trees that were destroyed in 1992. This would cause me to believe that
there is going to be a high rate of damage in the future as our planet continues to slowly
heat.