Assignment

On
Boundaries Of Ecosystem
Course Title: Plant Ecology-2
Course Code: BOT-603
Submitted to:
Date of Submission-15-12-2021

What is Ecosystem
 A System that includes all living organisms ( biotic factors) in an area as well as its
physical environment ( abiotic factors ) functioning together as a unit .
 An ecosystem is made up of plant , animals ,microorganisms, soil ,rocks ,minerals ,water
sources and the local atmosphere interacting with one another .

What is Boundary
 Something that indicates or fixes a limit or extent
 Those two trees mark the boundary of our property
 The mountain range that forms the country’s northern boundary .

Ecological boundary
 The ecosystem does not occur alone. Ecosystem boundaries are zones of transitions
between two adjacent habitats.
 Their boundaries are not well defined and the may overlap.
 There are certain areas where their boundaries are well defined it includes the pond and
the land ecosystems .
 They have some common organisms which include birds .
 There are exchange of inorganic nutrients between them.
 They occur naturally in all biomes but the extent of boundaries has been greatly increased
by antropogenic habitat modification.
 Important tips of ecosystem :
 The limnology is defined as the stud of lakes.
 The epilimnion is defined as the upper layer of warm water which occurs in the
stratified lake.
 The hypolimnion is defined as the lower layer of cold dense water which occurs in
the stratified lake .
 The endemics are defined as the distribution of plants in a specific area.
 The canopy is defined as the part of forest which formed by the tress .
 The alpine is defined as the region above the altitude of the present vegetation .

Ecosystem boundaries are the locations exhibiting gradients of change in environmental

conditions and a related shift in the composition of plant and /or animal communities.

1. Naturally occurring ecosystem boundaries can represent unique habitats to which

man species are specifically adapted.
2. Anthropogenically created ecosystem boundaries typically contain a mixture of
species from two adjacent ecosystems and often exert a negative influence on netural
habitats .

The ecosystem boundaries are not separated by rigid lines

 They are often separated by geographical barriers such as

 As these boarders are not rigids the ecosystem tend to blend with each other scientist
called this blending as ecotone.
 Ecosystem Boundaries
Biotic and Abiotic components provide boundaries that distinguish one ecosystem from another.

Some ecosystems, such as caves and lakes have very distinctive boundaries . however in most
ecosystems it is difficult to determine where one ecosystems stops and the next beings .

Ecosystem Structure and Boundaries

1. Biotic and abiotic components provide ecosystem boundaries and distinguish one
from another
a. Abiotic –water, temperature, light, soil atmospheric conditions ,PH, salinity,
etc
b. Biotic- living organisms , food ,predation , competition
2. Watersheds and topographic features are often used to delineate the boundaries of an
ecosystem
3. Know boundaries to determine components ,and flow of energy and matter.
 Delineating Ecosystem Boundarie
Natural Boundaries: ecosystems sometimes are bounded by naturally delineated borders (lawn,
crop field , lake ); appropriate questions include whole-lake trophic dynamics and energy fluxes
(e.g.,Lindeman 942)

Watershed: a stream and all the terrestrial surface that drains into it

 rich history of watershed scale studies in ecosystem ecology (small watershed

Approach e.g Bormann and likens 1967)
 watershedstudies use streams as sampling device , recording surface exports of
water , nutrients ,carbons ,pollutants ,etc.from the watershed ;deforestation impacts
on water supply to a city .
 Boundaries of Ecosystems overlap and change
 It is difficult to define the exact boundaries of an ecosystem.
 All ecosystems are connected to others around them.
 All ecosystems on the earth are connected to one another to form the biosphere .
 A change in the ecosystem may affect many others .

Classification
 Ecologists use the term boundary to refer to a wide range of range of real and conceptual
structures
 Ecological boundaries can be classified in many ways
  Origin and maintenance
 Spatial structure
 Function
 Temporal dynamic

Origin and maintenance

 Boundaries can arise in various ways
 We first distinguish between
 Ivestigative boundaries: lines on a map drawn by a scientist that may or may correspond
with an obvious physical discontinuities in nature
 Tangible boundaries: structures that can be identified in nature .

Sub Divisions
 Exogeneous origin : Boundaries between new lava flows and older vegetation
 Endogenous origin : a forest edge maintained by the joint effects of succession and seed
predation would have endogeneous origin.

Spatial Structure

 Different ecologists may use boundary to mean structures that are two – dimensional or
three – dimensional
 Mental or physical ; microscopic to regional in size ; step functions or gradients ;
reflective , absorptive , or permeable , and so on
 As long as usage is so varied , it is important for ecologists to specify the type of
boundary they are investigating.

Boundary Function
 Boundaries transform materials ; for instance , many materials are transformed at oxic-
anoxic boundaries in groundwaters or where groundwaters discharge into surface waters
 Ecological boundaries are transmissive or permeable: may allow only some fraction of
materials , energy , or organisms to pass
 Ecological boundaries are absorptive : most of the mechanical energy contained in waves
is absorbed in the surface zone boundary that separates land and water

Boundaries are reflective Organisms or materials that approach the boundary are returned to
the patch from which they originated

 Highly reflective boundaries are sometimes called hard boundaries .

 Temoral dynamics
 Maps or diagrams of boundaries represent snapshots of boundary structure at a given
moment
 A single map or diagram may give the impression that boundaries do not change over
time
 In fact ,many ecological boundaries are dynamics .