Question | Answer |
law of conservation of mass | physical law stating that matter can change form, but cannot be created or destroyed; in a closed system the mass of the system is constant |
primary producer | an autotroph, usually a photosynthetic organism - they make up the trophic level of an ecosystem that supports all other levels |
primary consumer | an herbivore or organism that eats plants or other autotrophs |
secondary consumer | a carnivore that eats herbivores |
tertiary consumer | a carnivore that eats other carnivores |
detritivore/decomposer | consumer that derives its energy and nutrients from non-living organic material such as corpses, fallen plant material and the wastes of living organisms |
detritus | dead organic matter |
primary production | the amount of light energy converted to chemical energy (organic compounds) by the autotrophs in an ecosystem during a given time period |
Gross Primary Production (GPP) | total primary production of an ecosystem |
Net Primary Production (NPP) | the GPP of an ecosystem minus the energy used by the producers for respiration |
Net Ecosystem Production (NEP) | GPP of an ecosystem minus the energy used by all autotrophs and heterotrophs for respiration |
limiting nutrient | an element that must be added for production to increase in a particular area |
eutrophication | process by which nutrients, particularly phosphorous and nitrogen, become highly concentrated in a body of water, leading to increased growth of organisms such as algae or cyanobacteria |
secondary production | the amount of chemical energy in consumers' food that is converted to their own new biomass during a given time period |
production efficiency | the percentage of energy stored in assimilated food that is not used for respiration or eliminated as waste |
trophic efficiency | the percentage of production transferred from one trophic level to the next higher trophic level |
turnover time | the time required to replace the standing crop of a population or group of populations calculated as the ratio of standing crop to production |
biogeochemical cycles | any of the various chemical cycles, which involve both biotic and abiotic components of an ecosytem |
bioremediation | the use of organisms to detoxify and restore polluted and degraded ecosystems |
biological augmentation | an approach to restoration ecology that uses organisms to add essential materials to a degraded ecosystem |