INSTRUCTIONAL

MODULE

ENG 413
Environmental Science and
Engineering

REX GREGOR M. LAYLO, RChE

INSTRUCTOR
 TABLE OF CONTENTS
Module 1.1 – Understanding Our Environment
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Module 1.2 – Matter, Energy, and Life
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Reference
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MODULE 1.1 – Understanding our Environment

Intended Learning Outcomes

After completing chapter 1, the students must be able to:

1. Recognize the concept of ecology and their interrelation to the environment
and life.
2. Define species, populations, communities, and ecosystems, and summarize
the ecological significance of trophic levels.
3. To compare the ways that water, carbon, nitrogen, sulfur, and phosphorus
cycle within ecosystems.

Introduction
Humans have always inhabited two worlds. One is the natural world of plants,
animals, soils, air, and water that preceded us by billions of years and of which we are a
part. The other is the world of social institutions and artifacts that we create for ourselves
using science, technology, and political organization. Both worlds are essential to our lives,
but integrating them successfully causes enduring tensions. Where earlier people had
limited ability to alter their surroundings, we now have power to extract and consume
resources, produce wastes, and modify our world in ways that threaten both our continued
existence and that of many organisms with which we share the planet. To ensure a
sustainable future for ourselves and future generations, we need to understand something
about how our world works, what we are doing to it, and what we can do to protect and
improve it.

Environment (from the French environner: to encircle or surround) can be defined as (1)
the circumstances or conditions that surround an organism or group of organisms, or (2)
the complex of social or cultural conditions that affect an individual or community. Since
humans inhabit the natural world as well as the “built” or technological, social, and cultural
world, all constitute important parts of our environment.

Environmental science, then, is the systematic study of our environment and our proper
place in it. A relatively new field, environmental science is highly interdisciplinary,
integrating natural sciences, social sciences, and humanities in a broad, holistic study of the
world around us. In contrast to more theoretical disciplines, environmental science is
mission-oriented.

MODULE 1.2 – Understanding our Environment

The accumulation and transfer of energy and nutrients allows living systems to exist.
These processes tie together the parts of an ecosystem—or an organism; you could think of
the accumulation and circulation of energy and nutrients as the basis of life. Understanding
how nutrients and energy function in a system, and where they come from, and where they
go, are essential to understanding ecology, the scientific study of relationships between
organisms and their environment.
In this chapter we’ll introduce a number of concepts that are essential to understanding
how living things function in their environment. We review what matter and energy are,
then explore the ways organisms acquire and use energy and chemical elements.

From Species to Ecosystems

Terms like species, population, and community are probably familiar to you, but
biologists have particular meanings for theseterms. In Latin, species literally means kind.
In biology, species generally refers to all organisms of the same kind that are genetically
similar enough to breed in nature and produce live, fertile offspring. A population consists
of all the members of a species living in a given area at the same time. All of the
populations living and interacting in a particular area make up a biological community.
What populations make up the biological community of which you are a part? If you
consider all the populations of animals, plants, fungi, and microorganisms in your area,
your community is probably large and complex.
Ecosystems include living and nonliving parts

An ecological system, or ecosystem, is composed of a biological community and its

physical environment. The environment includes abiotic factors (nonliving components),
such as climate, water, minerals, and sunlight, as well as biotic factors, such as organisms,
their products (secretions, wastes, and remains), and effects in a given area.

Food webs link species of different trophic levels

Photosynthesis (and rarely chemosynthesis) is the base of all ecosystems. Organisms

that photosynthesize, mainly green plants and algae, are therefore known as producers.
One of the major properties of an ecosystem is its productivity, the amount of biomass
(biological material) produced in a given area during a given period of time.
Photosynthesis is described as primary productivity because it is the basis for almost all
other growth in an ecosystem. Manufacture of biomass by organisms that eat plants is
termed secondary productivity. A given ecosystem may have very high total productivity,
but if decomposers decompose organic material as rapidly as it is formed, the net primary
productivity will be low.

Think about what you have eaten today and trace it back to its photosynthetic source.
If you have eaten an egg, you can trace it back to a chicken, which probably ate corn. This
is an example of a food chain, a linked feeding series. Now think about a more complex
food chain involving you, a chicken, a corn plant, and a grasshopper. The chicken could eat
grasshoppers that had eaten leaves of the corn plant. You also could eat the grasshopper
directly—some humans do. Or you could eat corn yourself, making the shortest possible
food chain. Humans have several options of where we fit into food chains.
 In ecosystems, some consumers feed on a single species, but most consumers have
multiple food sources. Similarly, some species are prey to a single kind of predator, but
many species in an ecosystem are beset by several types of predators and parasites. In this
way, individual food chains become interconnected to form a food web. Figure 1.1 shows
feeding relationships among some of the larger organisms in a woodland and lake
community. If we were to add all the insects, worms, and microscopic organisms that
belong in this picture, however, we would have overwhelming complexity.

Fig 1.1 Each time an organism feeds, it becomes a link in a food chain. In an
ecosystem, food chains become interconnected when predators feed on more than one kind
of prey, thus forming a food web. The arrows in this diagram indicate the direction in
which matter and energy are transferred through feeding relationships.

An organism’s feeding status in an ecosystem can be expressed as its trophic level

(from the Greek trophe, food). In our first example, the corn plant is at the producer level;
it transforms solar energy into chemical energy, producing food molecules. Other
organisms in the ecosystem are consumers of the chemical energy harnessed by the
producers. An organism that eats producers is a primary consumer. An organism that eats
primary consumers is a secondary consumer, which may, in turn, be eaten by a tertiary
consumer, and so on. Most terrestrial food chains are relatively short (seeds → mouse →
owl), but aquatic food chains may be quite long (microscopic algae → copepod → minnow
→ crayfish → bass → osprey). The length of a food chain also may reflect the physical
characteristics of a particular ecosystem. A harsh arctic landscape, with relatively low

species diversity, can have a much shorter food chain than a temperate or tropical one.
Organisms can be identified both by the trophic level at which they feed and by the
kinds of food they eat. Herbivores are plant eaters, carnivores are flesh eaters, and
omnivores eat both plant and animal matter. What are humans? We are natural omnivores,
by history and by habit. Tooth structure is an important clue to understanding animal food
preferences, and humans are no exception. Our teeth are suited for an omnivorous diet,
with a combination of cutting and crushing surfaces that are not highly adapted for one
specific kind of food, as are the teeth of a wolf (carnivore) or a horse (herbivore).

One of the most important trophic levels is occupied by the many kinds of organisms
that remove and recycle the dead bodies and waste products of others. Scavengers such as
crows, jackals, and vultures clean up dead carcasses of larger animals. Detritivores such as
ants and beetles consume litter, debris, and dung, while decomposer organisms such as
fungi and bacteria complete the final breakdown and recycling of organic materials. It
could be argued that these microorganisms are second in importance only to producers,
because without their activity nutrients would remain locked up in the organic compounds
of dead organisms and discarded body wastes, rather than being made available to
successive generations of organisms.

Ecological pyramids describe trophic levels

If we arrange the organisms according to trophic levels, they generally form a

pyramid with a broad base representing primary producers and only a few individuals in
the highest trophic levels. This pyramid arrangement is especially true if we look at the
energy content of an ecosystem.
 Fig 1.2 Organisms in an ecosystem may be identified by how they obtain food for their
life processes (producer, herbivore, carnivore, omnivore, scavenger, decomposer, reducer)
or by consumer level (producer; primary, secondary, or tertiary consumer) or by trophic
level (1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th).

Fig 1.3 A classic example of an energy pyramid from Silver Springs, Florida. The
numbers in each bar show the percentage of the energy captured in the primary producer
level that is incorporated into the biomass of each succeeding level. Detritivores and
decomposers feed at every level but are shown attached to the producer bar because this
level provides most of their energy.
 Fig 1.4 A biomass pyramid. Like energy, biomass decreases at higher levels. Arrows
show how biomass is used and lost.

Why is there so much less energy in each successive level in figure 1.4. Because of the
second law of thermodynamics, which says that energy dissipates and degrades as it is
reused. Thus, a rabbit consumes a great deal of chemical energy stored in carbohydrates in
grass, and much of that energy is transformed to kinetic energy, when the rabbit moves, or
to heat, which dissipates to the environment. A fox eats the rabbit, and the same
degradation and dissipation happen again. From the fox’s point of view, the lost energy is
used in the process of living and growing, and a little of the energy it has eaten is stored in
the fox’s tissues. From an ecosystem energy perspective, there will always be smaller
amounts of energy at successively higher trophic levels. Large top carnivores need a very
large pyramid, and a large home range, to support them. A tiger, for example, may require
a home range of several hundred square kilometers to survive. A general rule of thumb is
that only about 10 percent of the energy in one consumer level is represented in the next
higher level. The amount of energy available is often expressed in biomass. For example, it
generally takes about 100 kg of clover to make 10 kg of rabbit and 10 kg of rabbit to
make 1 kg of fox. The total number of organisms and the total amount of biomass in each
successive trophic level of an ecosystem also may form pyramids similar to those
describing energy content. The relationship between biomass and numbers is not as
dependable as energy, however. The biomass pyramid, for instance, can be inverted by
periodic fluctuations in producer populations (for example, low plant and algal biomass
present during winter in temperate aquatic ecosystems). The numbers pyramid also can be
inverted. One coyote can support numerous