EMA 513: ENVIRONMENTAL EDUCATION

ECOSYSTEMS: NATURE’S WEB

Definitions of Ecosystem

1.) A biological environment consisting of all the organisms living in a particular area, as well as
all the non-living, physical components of the environment with which the organisms interact,
such as air, soil, water, and sunlight. It is all the organisms in a given area, along with the non-
living (abiotic) factors with which they interact; i.e. a biological community and its physical
environment.

2.) The combined physical and biological components of an environment. An ecosystem is

generally an area within the natural environment in which physical (abiotic) factors of the
environment, such as rocks and soil, function together along with interdependent (biotic) factors.

3.) An ecosystem is a natural unit consisting of all plants, animals and micro-organisms (biotic
factors) in an area functioning together with all of the physical (abiotic) factors of the
environment. An ecosystem is a unit of interdependent organisms which share the same habitat.

4.) Any unit that includes all of the organisms (i.e the "community") in a given area interacting
with the physical environment so that a flow of energy leads to clearly defined trophic structure,
biotic diversity, and material cycles (i.e.: exchange of materials between living and non-living
parts) within the system is an ecosystem. Living organisms interact with every other element in
their local environment.

5.) Ecosystems are functional units consisting of living things in a given area, non-living
chemical and physical factors of their environment, linked together through nutrient cycle and
energy flow.

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Maseno University
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Microcosm /Model / experimental ecosystem - Microcosms are artificial, simplified
ecosystems that are used to simulate and predict the behaviour of natural ecosystems under
controlled conditions. Open or closed microcosms provide an experimental area for ecologists to
study natural ecological processes. Microcosm studies can be very useful.

Ecosystems can be divided into two categories:-

Natural ecosystems and artificial ecosystems

i.) Artificial ecosystems

These are created to mimic the natural ecosystems. Different artificial ecosystems are crop land
and zoo (artificial terrestrial ecosystem) and dams and aquarium. They are created by man for his
convenience pleasure and entertainment. They are maintained artificially by human beings
where, by addition of energy and deliberate management, balance of the nature is disturbed
regularly, e.g. croplands like maize, sugarcane, rice-fields, wheat, orchards, villages e.t.c.

ii.) Natural ecosystem

These are the ecosystems which operate by themselves under natural conditions and without
any major interference by man. e.g forests, oceans etc. It refers to all that surrounds us, both
the living and the non-living components, which influence the lives of organisms present in a
specific area at a given point of time.

The productivity and biodiversity of an ecosystem is significantly affected by the rate at which
organisms move between different parts of the ecosystem. Scientists hope that understanding the
mechanisms which determine the diversity and productivity of ecosystems will help ecologists

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and conservationists to develop strategies to ensure that conservation areas are highly productive
and rich in biodiversity.

The entire array of organisms inhabiting a particular ecosystem is called a community. In a

typical ecosystem, plants and other photosynthetic organisms are the producers that provide the
food. Ecosystems can be permanent or temporary. Ecosystems usually form a number of food
webs.

Examples of ecosystems
 Agro-ecosystems
 Aquatic ecosystems
 Coral reefs
 Desert
 Forests
 Human ecosystems
 Marine ecosystems
 Rainforest
 Riparian zone
 Savanna
 Steppe
 Tundra
 Urban ecosystem

Biomes
These are a classification of globally similar areas, including ecosystems, such as ecological
communities of plants and animals, soil organisms and climatic conditions. Biomes are in part
defined based on factors such as plant structures (such as trees, shrubs and grasses), leaf types
(such as broad-leaf and needle-leaf), plant spacing (forest, woodland, savanna) and climate.

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Maseno University
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A fundamental classification of biomes is:-
1. Terrestrial (land) biomes.
2. Freshwater biomes.
3. Marine biomes.
Ecosystems have become particularly important politically, since the Convention of Biological
Diversity (CBD) - ratified by 192 countries which defines "the protection of ecosystems, natural
habitats and the maintenance of viable populations of species in natural surroundings" as a
commitment of the ratifying countries. This has created the political necessity to spatially
identify ecosystems and somehow distinguish among them. The CBD defines an "ecosystem" as
a "dynamic complex of plant, animal and micro-organism communities and their non-living
environment interacting as a functional unit".

With the need of protecting ecosystems, the political need arose to describe and identify them
efficiently. Vreugdenhil et al. argued that this could be achieved most effectively by using a
physiognomic-ecological classification system, as ecosystems are easily recognizable in the
field as well as on satellite images. They argued that the structure and seasonality of the
associated vegetation, or flora, complemented with ecological data (such as elevation, humidity,
and drainage), are each determining modifiers that separate partially distinct sets of species. This
is true not only for plant species, but also for species of animals, fungi and bacteria. The degree
of ecosystem distinction is subject to the physiognomic modifiers that can be identified on an
image and/or in the field. Where necessary, specific fauna elements can be added, such as the
seasonal concentrations of animals and the distribution of coral reefs.
Several physiognomic-ecological classification systems are available:-

1.) Physiognomic-Ecological Classification of Plant Formations of the Earth: This

classification "describes the above-ground or underwater vegetation structures and cover as
observed in the field, described as plant life forms. This classification is fundamentally a
species-independent physiognomic, hierarchical vegetation classification system which also
takes into account ecological factors such as climate, elevation, human influences such as

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Maseno University
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grazing, hydric regimes and survival strategies such as seasonality. The system was expanded
with a basic classification for open water formations".

2.) Land Cover Classification System (LCCS). This was developed by the Food and
Agriculture Organization (FAO). From this perspective, ecosystems are not discrete units of
nature that simply can be identified using the most "correct" type of classification approach. In
agreement with the definition by Tansley ("mental isolates"), any attempt to delineate or classify
ecosystems should be explicit about the observer input in the classification including its
normative rationale.

Ecosystem services
These are “fundamental life-support services upon which human civilization depends,” and can
be divided into:-

 Direct:- Examples of direct ecosystem services are: pollination and erosion prevention.

 Indirect:- Indirect services could be considered e.g climate moderation, nutrient cycles
and detoxifying natural substances.

The services and goods an ecosystem provides are often undervalued as many of them are
without market value. Broad examples include:-

1. Regulating (climate, floods, nutrient balance, water filtration)

2. Provisioning (food, medicine, fur.

3. Cultural (science, spiritual, ceremonial, recreation, aesthetic)

4. Supporting (nutrient cycling, photosynthesis, soil formation).

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Maseno University
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Ecosystem legal rights
Ecuador's new constitution of 2008 was the first in the world to recognize legally enforceable
Rights of Nature, or ecosystem rights. The ordinance establishes that the government or any
resident can file a lawsuit on behalf of the local ecosystem. This is part of a growing body of
legal opinion proposing „wild law‟. Wild law would cover birds and animals, rivers and deserts.

Function and biodiversity

From an anthropocentric point of view, some people perceive ecosystems as production units
that produce goods and services, such as:-

 Wood by forest ecosystems

 Grass for cattle by natural grasslands.
 Meat from wild animals, often referred to as bush meat in Africa, has proven to be
extremely successful under well-controlled management schemes in South Africa and
Kenya.
 Much less successful has been the discovery and commercialization of substances of
wild organism for pharmaceutical purposes.

Services derived from ecosystems are referred to as ecosystem services. They may include:-
 Facilitating the enjoyment of nature, which may generate many forms of income and
employment in the tourism sector, often referred to as eco-tourisms
 Water retention, thus facilitating a more evenly distributed release of water,
 Soil protection, open-air laboratory for scientific research, etc.

A greater degree of species or biological diversity - commonly referred to as biodiversity of an

ecosystem. This may contribute to greater resilience of an ecosystem, because there are more
species present at a location to respond to change and thus "absorb" or reduce its effects. This
reduces the effect before the ecosystem's structure is fundamentally changed to a different state.
This is not universally the case and there is no proven relationship between the species diversity
of an ecosystem and its ability to provide goods and services on a sustainable level: Humid
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tropical forests produce very few goods and direct services and are extremely vulnerable to
change, while many temperate forests readily grow back to their previous state of development
within a lifetime after felling or a forest fire. Some grasslands have been sustainably exploited
for thousands of years (Mongolia, Africa, European peat and moorland communities).

Introduction of new elements, (whether biotic or abiotic), into an ecosystem tend to have a
disruptive effect. In some cases, this can lead to ecological collapse or "trophic cascading" and
the death of many species within the ecosystem. This therefore means that the abstract notion of
ecological health attempts to measure the robustness and recovery capacity for an ecosystem;
i.e. how far the ecosystem is away from its steady state.

Often, however, ecosystems have the ability to rebound from a disruptive agent. The difference
between collapse or a gentle rebound is determined by two factors:-
1. The toxicity of the introduced element
2. The resiliency of the original ecosystem.

Ecosystems are primarily governed by:-

 Chance events,
 Reactions these events provoke on non-living materials and
 Responses by organisms to the conditions surrounding them.

Thus, an ecosystem results from the sum of individual responses of organisms to stimuli from
elements in the environment. The presence or absence of populations merely depends on
reproductive and dispersal success, and population levels fluctuate in response to change events.
As the number of species in an ecosystem is higher, the number of stimuli is also higher. Since
the beginning of life organisms have survived continuous change through natural selection of
successful feeding, reproductive and dispersal behavior. Through natural selection the planet's
species have continuously adapted to change through variation in their biological composition
and distribution. Mathematically it can be demonstrated that greater numbers of different
interacting factors tend to dampen fluctuations in each of the individual factors.

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Maseno University
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Given the great diversity among organisms on earth, most ecosystems only changed very
gradually, as some species would disappear while others would move in. Locally, sub-
populations continuously go extinct, to be replaced later through dispersal of other sub-
populations. Ecologists recognize that certain intrinsic regulating mechanisms occur in nature.
Feedback and response mechanisms at the species level regulate population levels, most notably
through territorial behaviour. Territorial behaviour tends to keep populations at levels where
food supply is not a limiting factor. Hence, territorial behaviour is seen as a regulatory
mechanism at the species level but not at the ecosystem level. Thus, in their vision, ecosystems
are not regulated by feedback and response mechanisms from the ecosystem itself and there is no
such thing as a balance of nature.

If ecosystems are governed primarily by change processes, through which its subsequent state
would be determined by both predictable and random actions, they may be more resilient to
sudden change than each species individually. In the absence of a balance of nature, the species
composition of ecosystems would undergo shifts that would depend on the nature of the change,
but entire ecological collapse would probably be infrequent events.

Ulanowicz used information theory tools to describe the structure of ecosystems, emphasizing
mutual information (correlations) in studied systems. Drawing on this methodology and prior
observations of complex ecosystems, Ulanowicz depicted approaches to determining the stress
levels on ecosystems and predicting system reactions to defined types of alteration in their
settings (such as increased or reduced energy flow, and eutrophication.
Different species are connected to each other, not only regarding their position in the food chain,
but also regarding other services, i.e. provisioning of shelter.

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Maseno University
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Ecosystem ecology
This is the integrated study of biotic and abiotic components of ecosystems and their interactions
within an ecosystem framework. This science examines how ecosystems work and relates this to
their components such as chemicals, bedrock, soil, plants and and animals. Ecosystem ecology
examines physical and biological structure and examines how these ecosystem characteristics
interact.

Ecosystems
An ecosystem extends a community by involving also the abiotic environment, that is, the
physical and chemical environment. Energy flow and nutrient cycling(cycling of chemicals) are
significant aspects in understand how ecosystems function. An ecosystem often includes cycles
and flows that involve dozens of living things as well as non-living matters, not very much like
when we are talking about populations and communities where organisms are studied
independently, and interactions are only between no more than two participants. Ecologists focus
not only on organic living things of an ecosystem, but also those vital inorganic conditions and
materials that are indispensable for living things to survive.

Abiotic Components
Abiotic components are such physical and chemical factors of an ecosystem as light,
temperature, atmosphere gases(nitrogen, oxygen, carbon dioxide are the most important), water,
wind, soil. These specific abiotic factors represent the geological, geographical, hydrological and
climatological features of a particular ecosystem. Separately:-
 Water, which is at the same time an essential element to life and a milieu
 Air, which provides oxygen, nitrogen, and carbon dioxide to living species and allows
the dissemination of pollen and spores
 Soil, at the same time source of nutriment and physical support. The salinity, nitrogen
and phosphorus content, ability to retain water, and density are all influential.
 Temperature, which should not exceed certain extremes, even if tolerance to heat is
significant for some species
 Light, which provides energy to the ecosystem through photosynthesis
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  Natural disasters can also be considered abiotic. According to the intermediate
disturbance hypothesis, a moderate amount of disturbance does good to increase the
biodiversity.

Biotic Components
The living organisms are the biotic components of an ecosystem. In ecosystems, living things are
classified after the way they get their food.

1. Autotrophs produce their own organic nutrients for themselves and other members of the
community; therefore, they are called the producers. There are basically two kinds of
autotrophs:-
a) Chemoautotrophs
b) Photoautogrophs.

Chemautotrophs are bacteria that obtain energy by oxidizing inorganic compounds such as
ammonia, nitrites, and sulfides, and they use this energy to synthesize carbohydrates.

Photoautotrophs are photosynthesizers such as algae and green plants that produce most of the
organic nutrients for the biosphere.

2. Heterotrophs, as consumers that are unable to produce, are constantly looking for source
of organic nutrients from elsewhere.

a) Herbivores like giraffe are animals that graze directly on plants or algae.
b) Carnivores as wolf feed on other animals; birds that feed on insects are carnivores, and so
are hawks that feed on birds.
c) Omnivores are animals that feed both on plants and animals, as human.

3. Detritivores are organisms that rely on detritus, the decomposing particles of organic
matter, for food. Earthworms and some beetles, termites, and maggots are all terrestrial

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 detritivores. Non-photosynthetic bacteria and fungi, including mushrooms, are
decomposers that carry out decomposition, the breakdown of dead organic matter,
including animal waste. Decomposers perform a very valuable service by releasing
inorganic substances that are taken up by plants once more.

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ENERGY FLOW
Everything needs energy to motion, living things are no exceptions. The sun is the ultimate
source of energy for every ecosystem. The energy flow of an ecosystem starts the moment
photo-synthesizers capture sun light and transform it into a stock of organic compound like
glucose that stores heat and energy for later use, and ends until the energy is used up or released
into the surroundings in metabolic processes. In between them, energy transfers from one
organism to another at the aid of food webs, each of the organisms receiving only a small
percentage of the total energy carried in the one being consumed.

ENERGY FLOW

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A certain amount of energy is egested in feces or excreted in urine and sweat. Of the assimilated
energy, a portion is utilized in cellular respiration and thereafter becomes heat. The remaining
portion of energy is converted into increased body weight or additional offspring.

PRIMARY PRODUCTIVITY AND SECONDARY PRODUCTIVITY

Approximately 1% to 2% of the solar energy that falls on a plant is converted to food or other
organic material.
a.) Primary productivity is the amount of organic matter an ecosystem produces from solar
energy within a given area during a given period of time.
b.) Gross primary productivity is the total amount of organic matter produced by all autotrophs
in an ecosystem, including that used by themselves. It is incurred through the process of
photosynthesis that is carried out by green plants, algae, and some bacteria.
c.) Net primary productivity is the total amount of energy fixed per unit of time minus the
amount of energy expended by the metabolic activities of the photosynthetic organisms in the
community, denoting the amount of organic matter produced by autotrophs that is available for
heterotrophs.

Example of Primary Productivity

In tropical forests and in marshlands, between 1500 and 3000 grams of organic material are
normally produced per square meter per year. Corresponding figures for other communities are:
temperate forests, 1100 to 1500 grams; dry deserts, 200 grams. For such highly productive
communities as estuaries, coral reefs, and sugarcane fields, the figures may range from 10 to 25
grams per day, for comparable annual yields of 3600 to 9100 grams.

d.) Biomass is the net weight of all organisms living in an ecosystem, which, increases as a
result of its net production.

e.) Secondary productivity is the rate of biomass accumulation by heterotrophs (herbivores,

carnivores and detritivores). Secondary productivity is just the portion that is used to increase
body weight and nurture offspring.

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FOOD WEBS AND TROPHIC LEVELS

Food webs are the complicated feeding relationships that exist among organisms in natural
ecosystem.

An Ocean Grazing Food Web

Adapted from http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/Biology

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This ocean food web displayed above shows that krill and other herbivorous plankton feed on
phytoplankton, the producer, while birds and fish feed on krill, but they are in fact omnivores
because they also feed on plankton; squid hunts fish for food while enjoying some plankton once
in a while as well. These herbivores and omnivores all provide energy and nutrients for a number
of different carnivores, such as seals and whales.
Another sort of food web called detrital food web is revealed in the diagram below. Compared
with grazing food web, it is a food web more involved with decomposition processes, and more
engaged in abiotic components of an ecosystem.

An Ocean Detritus Food Web

Adapted from http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/Biology

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This decomposer food web is modeled upon the detritus food chains that are based on mangrove
leaves which fall into shallow estuarine water of South Florida. The bacteria and fungi of decay
are the decomposers, but they can be food for other detritivores. Note that detritivores are not
necessarily bacteria or fungi, they can also be large scavengers such as crabs and shrimps that
feed on dead organisms and also the cast-off parts of them.

There are producers and consumers in a food web. Producers are those able to synthesize food
for themselves, like phytoplankton; and all the others are consumers that rely on producers
directly or indirectly for a living. Among these consumers, several different levels may be
recognized. Primary consumer, or herbivores, feed directly on the green plants; secondary
consumers, carnivores and parasites of animals, feed in turn on the herbivores. Decomposers or
detritivores break down the organic matter accumulated in the bodies of other organisms.

All these levels, if we link them one to another in a straight-line manner, according to who eats
whom, we have food chains. Food chains are selected single-lane food relationships in a series
among organisms from a more complicated food web, as below:
phy== kril == fish== sea == wh
top > l > > l > ale
lan
kto
n

Diagrams like this that tell who eats whom are called food chains.

A trophic level is all the organisms that feed at a particular level in a food chain. In the grazing
food web given at the beginning of the section, going from bottom to top:-

a) The phytoplanktons are primary producers(first trophic level)

b) The first herbivores that feed on the them, namely the krills and herbivorous planktons
are primary consumers(second trophic level)

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 c) The next group of animals are secondary consumers(third trophic level).

Frequently when we talk about the trophic levels, we think about a pyramid like this that exhibits
four trophic levels:-

Ecological Pyramid of Biomass

Numbers indicated in the diagram are measures of biomass, and the widths of the colored
rectangles are so drawn that the proportions are respected. A plant fixes about 1% of solar energy
that falls on its green parts. The successive members of a food chain, in turn, process into their
own bodies about 10% of the energy available in the organisms on which they feed.

Aside from pyramids of biomass, there are also ecological pyramids of numbers and energy,
more or less in the same impressive construction that slender representations of top consumers
are set upon a huge foundation of that of producers. At the top of most food webs, just imagine
the number of plants that have to be grown to support all human being.

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