A blogging page for Intermediate 2 Students: So far in biology we have been looking at some of the worlds biggest ecosystems. Read more about them below:
1. Tundra
What is an ecosystem?
An ecosystem is a balance of population and a community within a habitat.
What is biome (tundra)?
Biomes are the world’s major communities where insects, animals, plants
and people live in a certain types of climates. The earth’s coldest biome is the tundra which has permanently frozen subsoil, called permafrost.
Arctic Tundra.
The Arctic tundra is a cold, vast, treeless area of low, swampy plains in the far north around the Arctic Ocean. It includes Lapland and Scandinavia in the northern part of Europe, Siberia in Asia, and Alaska and Canada in North America, as well as most of Greenland.
Example of a food chain in Tundra.
If the lemmings were removed from the food chain the polar bears would have less food sources and would result in having to eat the lichens.
If Polar Bears were removed from the food chain the population of lemmings would increase as the Polar Bears would no longer be eating them.
Pyramid of Biomass.
Pyramid of Biomass represents the mass of each organism in a food chain.
In this case there is a high mass of Lichens, then a smaller mass of Lemmings and a smaller mass of Polar Bears.
By Carolynne and Jack.
2. Coniferous Forests
What is an ecosystem?
An ecosystem is made up of a community of living things and their habitats that have a balanced relationship.
Taiga (coniferous forest)
The coniferous forest occurs between 50 and 60 degrees north, and it is found in the northern parts of North America, Europe and Asia.
Two thirds of the coniferous forest is found in Siberia, whilst the rest is found in Scandinavia, Alaska and Canada and is found close to Arctic tundra.
The trees are needle – leaved, and are usually evergreen and shallow rooted. They can grow in a wide range of soils and climates.
What would happen if you removed a species from the food web?
Example 1:
If you took away the predaceous insects then there will be no food for the toad so the toad would die out and there would be less food for the snakes.
Example 2:
If you took away the foxes then there would be too many rabbits, squirrels, mice and seed – eating birds. This means that there would be fewer plants for other animals to eat and there would possibly be an increase in population of hawks and owls because that is there prey.
The pyramid of biomass represents the total mass of organisms at each level of the food chain.
The plant is the producer. The rabbit is the primary consumer, and the fox is the secondary consumer. The higher up the pyramid, the lower the mass of each organism.
By Niki, Emma and Tamsyn
3. Rainforests
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What do you call a parrot wearing a raincoat? |
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Answer: Polly Unsaturated |
Ecosystem: An environment consisting of all the organisms living in a particular area.
Biomes: A biome is a very large ecosystem e.g. Tropical Rainforest.
The rainforest is a large area of very tall trees. The rainforest gets 60-400 inches of rain every year. The temperatures in the rainforest ranges from 68ºF to 93ºF. The four layers of the Rainforests are the forest floor, the understory, the canopy, and the emergent layer.http://www.early.k12.ga.us/eces/the%20rainforest/page2.html
If an organism is removed from the food web, for example frogs, there would be more plants and plankton because they are only getting eaten by the possums, there would be less kookaburras because there would not be as much food for them to eat.
A Pyramid of biomass is the total mass of each organism at each stage of the food web.
By Julie, Andrew & Lauren
ECOSYSTEMS IN A DESERT
What is an ecosystem?
An ecosystem is made up of a community of living things and their habitats. By using the word habitat we mean this is where the organisms live. In a particular habitat we call this a community; it can have a number of different animals and plants. A population is different as this is when a group of organisms of the same species are living in a habitat. All together by combining the organisms and habitats we create an ecosystem.
What is a biome?
A biome is a very large ecosystem e.g. Tropical
Rainforest. The map to the
left shows 9 of the world’s
main biomes.
The yellow shaded areas on the diagram indicate the deserts.
Our biome is the Sahara desert. The Sahara is the biggest desert in the world and is located at the top of Africa. In Sahara, the temperature in the day is 52°C and the night temperature is -3.3°C.
This is an food web of the desert 
Depending on what species moves it could decrease the population of the organism that gains its energy from them. This is what would happen if one species is removed from the food chain. If more than one species is removed a bigger variety of organisms would decrease as there would be less to gain energy from. The population of plants would increase as well due to the decrease of organisms eating them. Energy can also be lost in a food web due to movement, waste and heat.
This is a more complicated version of a pyramid of biomass. This is used to show what a diagram would look like as a pyramid of biomass. A ‘pyramid of biomass’ is the mass of each organism at each stage in the food chain. If we were to use the organisms above, they would be displayed like this at each level.
Image 1 – Google; Deserts
Image 2 – www.geography.learnontheinternet.co.uk/topic/deserts
Image 3- Google; Desert Food chains
By Leigh, Fraser and Yvette
