Unit 7 Reflection

In this unit, we talked about what is Ecology, the purpose of the food web and the food chain in the ecosystem, how is energy divided in the ecosystem, how the population of living species can possibly grow in an ecosystem, Ecosystem recycling, and how do we protect our Ecosystem. Ecology is the study of living things and their environment, and has the levels of organization: Organism to Population to Community to Ecosystem to Biome to Biosphere.

The Ecosystem environment is full of living organisms with their own habitat, interdependence, and niche, but they also have Abiotic and Biotic factors of determining an ecosystem. In order for producers and consumers to survive, they need sunlight and other animals to survive. The way of how producers and consumers attain energy in an ecosystem is through a food chain  or food web, though food web is more accurate. Ecological pyramids help show how energy is transferred and uses the 10% rule starting from the bottom level of the pyramid to the next level and so on. Besides an Energy of Pyramid, there is a Pyramid of numbers that shows amount of animals left in each level and the Biomass Pyramid which is the amount of potential energy in each trophic level.

The population of living species can grow exponentially or logistically, depending on the carrying capacity of the environment, and how much living organisms in species are born, leave , come, and die. By seeing successions after large natural disturbances we still have an ecosystem and we can recycle through using nutrient cycles like the Water, Carbon, Nitrogen, Phosphorous cycle. Finally, we can protect our Ecosystem by looking at each environment and determining the amount of habitat loss, overexploitation, introduced/exotic species, and climate change in it.

I want to learn about how the nutrient cycles are used in our life, and what are more problems we face in a linear system of earth? I wonder about whether we will be able to help make Earth a greener environment.

I thought the Conservation Biologist Project was very successful esp. with my groupmates contributing a lot of time to this project of the Amazon Rainforest. I thought the quality of the recording of the Powerpoint was very good but it took a while to record since not everyone had time to practice what they planned for the presentation, so next time, just have a time to read over the parts each person will read and the next class, we will record it. I learned that the Amazon Rainforest is also affected by Global Warming and is endangered. The collaboration of our group was perfect via email and class time. I am assertive but to me more assertive, I cannot blame people too much by saying "you" and set your own boundaries and tell them when people invade them when they talk to you.