Do you love the slimy,green,and gooey, flavor of kelp? Many people don't , not realizing how important it is. Kelp is one of the most healthy and beneficial plant. It provides many benefits to humans and the environment. It can reduce climate change, provide nutrients to humans, and provide food and shelter to many organisms.
Kelp can reduce climate change. According to scientist Tim Flannery, “seaweed grows 30 to 60 times the rate of land based plants.” As plants grow they absorb carbon dioxide. Since seaweed grows so fast it is able to take in and hold more carbon dioxide than land based plants. This is important because carbon dioxide is one of the main causes of climate change (2). In addition to being able to reduce climate change, some species of seaweed are super stable and don’t break down easily. This is important because if seaweed doesn't break down easily it has more potential for long term carbon storage than any other land based plant (1). Because of its rapid growth
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For example the canopies of kelp provide shelter for many organisms . Because the kelp is able to float, it creates a canopy. This canopy has warm temperatures and slow water currents, providing a home to defenseless young. This is important because the kelp is able to protect many organisms from predators and rough storms (6). Kelp is also the base of the food chain. Since kelp is the base of the food chain many organisms eat kelp and other animals eat them.This is important because without the kelp all the primary consumers would starve having no other food source (5). Finally each part of kelp is home to a different species. Because each part of kelp is home to a different species, many species breed in them. This is important because if the kelp where gone there would be no place for the organisms to breed downsizing their population (4). Overall kelp is providing food and shelter to many
Purpose: The purpose of this lab is to investigate the various components of different ecosystems in a smaller representation and study the conditions required for the ecosystem’s sustainability as well as the connections between
They also look after the quality of coastal waters by watering down, sifting, and settling deposits, left-over nutrients and contaminants. They are highly productive ecosystems and provide habitats and act as nurseries for all manner of life.
Sea otters (Enhydra lutris) are marine mammals capable of spending their entire lives in water. Being carnivorous in nature, they feed on sea urchins, crabs, fishes, mussels and clams. They are referred to as keystone species due to their profound impact on marine ecology. The interaction between sea otters, sea urchins and kelp forests has been studied as a model for the impact of predator-prey interactions on community ecology. Sea otters are keystone predators, whose presence has a far-reaching influence on the marine food web by affecting the populations of sea urchins, which indirectly affects the populations of kelp forests & other marine organisms. There has been a steep decline in sea otter populations due to water pollution and exploitation for furs. This has affected marine ecology adversely. It is therefore suggested that sea otters should be included in the endangered species list to protect them from further exploitation. This study focuses on the community ecology of sea otters and their impact on marine ecology. The need for their inclusion in the Endangered Species list and the implications of such an intervention are also evaluated.
a.) Choosing organisms from four different trophic levels of this four web as examples, explain how energy is obtained at each trophic level. Since energy is a necessary part of how an organism survives, how it obtains it’s energy is crucial. When you look at an ecosystem, and all the organisms living within that ecosystem, you can link many of the species together by their dependence on each other. Scientists will look at these links to see how they depend on each other, or in other words, where their main source of energy and nutrition is.
Pickle Lake, Ontario is located in the Canadian Shield landform region. This landform region is the largest region in all of Canada and was formed over 4 billion years ago. This is where most of the metallic minerals are found and there are also igneous and metamorphic rocks found here. It was formed by many different effects, one way was when the molten rock cooled it formed igneous rock creating the Shield. Another one was minerals separated into layers according to their density and then the Shield rock cooled. Then the main one is glaciation and erosion which is/was the cause of most landform creation. There are many physical descriptions of the Canadian Shield first, is there are many small lakes formed by glaciers. Next, there are also
A seismograph station is located 2000 km from an earthquake’s epicenter. Explain the order that the S and P waves will arrive at the station by using the characteristics of the waves.
Native plants in any given area have adapted to all the other organisms in a given area and genetically diverse ecosystems are generally maintained.
The Kermode bear is an interesting bear that’s endangered. It eats a healthy diet of salmon, found from the ocean, and berries ,found from brushes. It can either have a black coat of fur or some bears have white fur. The Kermode bear has many nicknames such as Spirit bear and ghost bear (Shoumatoff). Meanwhile they are rare which means we don’t want them to be exists because they are a unique species and they help the environment by eating salmon as their main source of food they take the “leftovers” and throw them in the grass this fertilizes the soil making it rich (Tweed).
waters. They have venomous spines that can be very painful. The Red Lionfish can be aggressive
It is a significant habitat for many marine species and they are among the most productive natural systems (Restoring a special place at Myora Springs, 2012). This is indicated by the dense plant growth and high diversity of organisms that use this ecosystem for breeding, nursery and feeding areas.
Japanese Knotweed was not always here. It was introduced to the United States in the late 1800’s from Asia. It was introduced as an ornamental plant. This plant causes a loss of local biodiversity in the areas where it grows. It crowds out many local plants growing along the ground by taking their needed nutrients and water. Because of their tallness and the size of their leaves, there is little sun penetrating the ground where they grow. This further creates problems for understory plants, as well as newly germinating plants, such as saplings. One study sectioned in south-central New York found that there were not any native plants 33 feet inside the Knotweed
Keystone species maintain ecological communities by providing structure and balance for their habitat. The concept behind a keystone species is that they support species diversity through their presence, activities and abundance within the community (Mills et.al. 1993). If a disturbance happens within the community and the keystone species disappears, the organization and diversity drastically shifts. To be defined as a keystone species, there are a few characteristics a species must demonstrate. The first is that their presence within the community must help structure and assist the diversity of their community (Mills et.al. 1993). The second is that they must have some importance to their community in relation to the other species who live there (Mills et.al 1993). The keystone species are at the top of the community structure, with few, if any, predators. They control the population density of the primary consumer who consumes the primary producer (Mills et.al. 1993). Sea otters, which typically live in tidal areas off the western coasts of the United States and Alaska, are a common example of a widely studied keystone species.
Diversity of species is influenced by the type of forest where the species is located. To determine the value of a forest, one must ask oneself the question “How does a forest affect you?” Forests affect us in ways of aesthetics, monetary gains, product supplement and any other utilization that proves beneficial. This is true of both tropical and temperate forests.
the food source greatly. By not preserving corals, we are taking food directly out of our
The branch of science that deals with how living things, including humans, are related to their surroundings is called ecology . The Earth supports some 5 million species of plants, animals, and microorganisms. These interact and influence their surroundings, forming a vast network of interrelated environmental systems called ecosystems. The arctic tundra is an ecosystem and so is a Brazilian rain forest. The islands of Hawaii are a relatively isolated ecosystem. If left undisturbed, natural environmental systems tend to achieve balance or stability among the various species of plants and animals. Complex ecosystems are able to compensate for changes caused by weather or intrusions from migrating animals and are therefore usually said to be more stable than simple ecosystems. A field of corn has only one dominant species, the corn plant, and is a very simple ecosystem. It is easily destroyed by drought, insects, disease, or overuse. A forest may remain relatively unchanged by weather that would destroy a nearby field of corn, because the forest is characterized by greater diversity of plants and animals. Its complexity gives it stability.