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3. Energy Flows in Nature
What is biomass?
biological production: the capture of
usable energy from the environment to
produce organic compounds
three measures are used for biological
production:
! there are two kinds of living things
responsible for production:
! autotrophs: make organic chemicals from
inorganic using energy from the sun (primary
production)
! heterotrophs: cannot make their own food
and must feed on other organisms (secondary
production)
! examples:
! not all of the energy that an organism
takes in goes towards growth
State 1 State 2
B
1
: biomass at time 1 B
2
: biomass at time 2
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Botkin
3.1.1. net production and gross production
! the change in biomass during a given time:
! however, in the process the organism has had
to live, so it has used some of its incoming
energy for respiration
! gross production is given by:
3.1.2. energy of an ecosystem
! consider an ecosystem made up of autotrophs
and heterotrophs (primary and secondary
production)
! what happens to the energy of
respiration?
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Describe each
energy flow in the
following diagram
as either heat (h),
sunlight (s),
chemical/food (cf),
or chemical/dead
biomass (cd)
Botkin
! not all energy available to an organism is
used
! energy transfer is never 100% efficient
as energy moves through the food chain it
becomes less usable
3.2.1. 2
nd
law of thermodynamics
COLD HOT (1) WARM (2)

(2) Is more random than (1) the
universe seeks to be more
random, so going from (2) to (1)
cannot happen unless there is a
heat pump
Heat cannot be transferred
without some sort of
connection
But the energy from the pump would have to come from
somewhere (e.g. chemical energy from fossil fuel), which
would result in an increase in entropy in the bigger system
! in biological systems, typically ___% of
energy transferred between trophic levels
ends up at heat
Grasses and
herbs
Mice Long-tailed weasels
Solar radiation
15% 68% 93% Respiration as a
percent of the total
energy intake
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! in biological systems, organisms on the next
trophic level consume only part of the available
food, and of that, not all of the consumed food
is assimilated
Energy to
respiration (R)
Energy for
growth (P)
Available
Energy
Consumed
Energy (C) Assimilated
Energy (A)
Mihelcic, Fig. 5.20
! P/C is the gross production efficieny
! P/A is the net production efficiency
! it takes 7.5kg of vegetable matter to produce
0.5kg of beef. What is the gross production
efficiency?
! it takes 1.6kg of vegetable matter to produce
0.5kg of eggs. What is the gross production
efficiency?
! as a result of inefficiencies, energy at each
trophic level is smaller than the next
lowest one
Calculate the mass consumed at each
trophic level
sun wheat (wh) grasshopper (gr) frog (fr) human
wt/organism 1g 0.1kg 75kg
consumption 0.123 g wh/d 10 gr/d 10 fr/d
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3.4. Production Efficiency
trophic
level
organism amount consumed
(kg/yr)
4 human
3 frogs
2 grasshoppers
1 wheat
3.4. Production Efficiency
e.g. (p.151- Botkin) in one hectare:
sun mulberries silkworms carp
35 tonnes/yr
excrement
avg. yield=
28.5 tonnes/yr
B
1
= 1.5kg
B
2
= 2238kg
(over 1 year)
energy contents:
mulberries = 21kJ/g
silkworms = 22kJ/g
excrement = 5kJ/g
carp = 25kJ/g
3.4. Production Efficiency
What is the net production of silkworms?
What is the energy transfer from mulberry trees
to silkworms (assume worms consume all
yield)?
If P/C for carp is 10%, how many tonnes of carp
are produced per year?
Draw an energy pyramid and a mass pyramid
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Energy in nature
At each step, energy is lost as .