Artificial aquatic ecosystem

Artificial terrestrial
ecosystem
Difference
 Ecological Concept: Resilience
and Resistance
• Resistance is the ability for an ecosystem to remain unchanged
when being subjected to a disturbance or disturbances. Some
ecosystems are better at resisting change than others, and therefore
have high resistance.
• Resilience is the ability and rate of an ecosystem to recover from
a disturbance and return to its pre-disturbed state. Some ecosystems
can shift greatly from their previous state and still return to pre-
disturbance conditions. The measure for how far an ecosystem can
be shifted from its previous state and still return to normal is called its
amplitude.
• Both resistance and resilience are components of determining
ecosystem stability. Both can also occur at the community,
population, and individual level. An ecosystem can have high
resistance to disturbance, but low resilience, and vice versa. Low
resistance can sometimes be advantageous, such as in ecosystems
that rely on natural disturbances to temporarily change their
conditions in order to remain stable over the long term.
Sundarban Case study
 Ecosystem resilience
• It is one possible ecosystem response to a perturbation or disturbance.
• A resilient ecosystem resists damage and recovers quickly
from stochastic disturbances such as fires, flooding, windstorms, insect
population explosions, and human activities such as deforestation and the
introduction of exotic plant or animal species.
• Disturbances of sufficient magnitude or duration can profoundly affect an
ecosystem and may force an ecosystem to reach a threshold beyond
which a different regime of processes and structures predominates.

• Human activities that adversely affect ecosystem resilience such as

reduction of biodiversity, exploitation of natural resources, pollution, land-
use, and anthropogenic climate change and are increasingly causing
regime shifts in ecosystems, often to less desirable and degraded
conditions.
• Interdisciplinary discourse on resilience now includes consideration of the
interactions of humans and ecosystems via socio-ecological systems, and
the need for shift from the maximum sustainable yield paradigm to
environmental management which aims to build ecological resilience
through "resilience analysis, adaptive resource management, and
adaptive governance"
 Human impacts on resilience
• Resilience refers to ecosystem's stability and capability of
tolerating disturbance and restoring itself. If the
disturbance is of sufficient magnitude or duration, a
threshold may be reached where the ecosystem changes
state, possibly permanently.
• Sustainable use of environmental goods and services
requires understanding and consideration of the resilience
of the ecosystem and its limits. However, the elements
which influence ecosystem resilience are complicated.
Examples are various elements such as the water cycle,
fertility, biodiversity, plant diversity and climate, interact
fiercely and effect different systems.
• Human activity impacts upon the resilience of terrestrial,
aquatic and marine ecosystems. These include agriculture,
deforestation, pollution, mining, recreation, over fishing,
dumping of waste into the sea and climate change.
Homeostatic mechanism:
• Homeostatic control mechanisms have at least three
interdependent components for the variable being
regulated:
• The receptor is the sensing component that monitors
and responds to changes in the environment. When
the receptor senses a stimulus, it sends information
to a control center
• control center, the component that sets the range at
which a variable is maintained. The control center
determines an appropriate response to the stimulus.
In most homeostatic mechanisms the control center
is the brain.
• The control center then sends signals to an effector,
which can be muscles, organs or other structures that
receive signals from the control center. After
receiving the signal, a change occurs to correct the
deviation by either enhancing it with positive
feedback or depressing it with negative feedback
 Ecological crises
• An ecological crisis occurs when the environment of
a species or a population changes in a way that destabilizes
its continued survival. There are many possible causes of
such crises:
• It may be that the environment quality degrades compared to
the species' needs, after a change of abiotic ecological
factor (for example, an increase of temperature, less
significant rainfalls).
• It may be that the environment becomes un-favourable for the
survival of a species (or a population) due to an increased
pressure of predation.
• Lastly, it may be that the situation becomes un-favourable to
the quality of life of the species (or the population) due to raise
in the number of individuals (overpopulation).
Food Chain vs Food Web
 Energy allocation
1. Ingestion
2. Digestion
3. Growth and reproduction
4. Egestion
5. Excretion
6. Respiration
7. Locomotion and movement
Differences..
Types of Food Webs
1. Connectedness/ Topological

2. Energy flow

3. Functional
 2
1

Tropospecies

3 Nodes

•Link
•Linkage density
•Chain length
 Features of Food Webs
1. Cycles
2. Cannibalism
3. Omnivory
3

2
1
Phytoplankton
Phytoplankton Zooplankton
(living)
 Ecological Pyramid

• Pyramid of numbers
• Pyramid of Biomass
• Pyramid of Energy

An ecological pyramid of numbers shows graphically the

population of each level in a food chain.
Example: 10,000 fresh water phytoplankton support
1,000 zooplankton, which in turn support 100 small
fishes followed by finally one large fish.
• An ecological pyramid of biomass shows the
relationship between biomass and trophic level
by quantifying the amount of biomass present at
each trophic level of an ecological community at
a particular moment in time. Typical units for a
biomass pyramid could be grams per meter2, or
calories per meter2.
• The pyramid of biomass may be 'inverted'.
Example: in a pond ecosystem, the standing
crop of phytoplankton, the major producers, at
any given point will be lower than the mass of
the heterotrophs, such as fish and insects.
• This is explained as the
phytoplankton reproduce very quickly, but have
much shorter individual lives.
• Pyramid of productivity/energy: very useful and
always in a shape of pyramid
 Ecological pyramid
• An ecological pyramid (or trophic pyramid) is a
graphical representation designed to show
the biomass or biomass productivity at each trophic
level in a given ecosystem.
• Biomass is the amount of living or organic matter present
in an organism. Biomass pyramids show how much
biomass is present in the organisms at each trophic level,
while productivity pyramids show the production or
turnover in biomass.
• Ecological pyramids begin with producers on the bottom
(such as plants) and proceed through the various trophic
levels (such as herbivores that eat plants, then carnivores
that eat herbivores, then carnivores that eat those
carnivores, and so on). The highest level is the top of
the food chain.
 Ecological Energetic
Solar radiation
118,872 Cal/sq Decomposition (3.0)
cm/yr

Decomposition (0.5)
Decomposition
(trace)
AUTOTROPHS
HERBIVORE CARNIVORES
Gross S15 Cal/sq 3 Cal/sq cm/yr
production cm/yr
111.0 Cal/sq
N.U (1.2)
cm/yr N.U (7.0)
N.U (70.0)
Respiration (1.8)
Respiration (4.5)
Respiration
(23.0)
 Productivity
• Primary production is the production of organic
compounds from atmospheric or aquatic carbon dioxide,
principally through the process of photosynthesis,
with chemosynthesis being much less important.
• Almost all life on earth is directly or indirectly reliant on
primary production.
• The organisms responsible for primary production are
known as primary producers or autotrophs, and form the
base of the food chain.
• In terrestrial eco-regions, these are mainly plants, while
in aquatic eco-regions algae are primarily responsible.
• Primary production is distinguished as either net or gross,
• Gross primary production (GPP) is the rate at which an ecosystem's
producers capture and store a given amount of chemical energy as
biomass in a given length of time.
• Some fraction of this fixed energy is used by primary producers
for cellular respiration and maintenance of existing tissues (i.e.,
"growth respiration" and "maintenance respiration").
• The remaining fixed energy (i.e., mass of photosynthesis) is referred
to as net primary production (NPP).

NPP = GPP - respiration [by plants]

• Net primary production is the rate at which all the plants in an

ecosystem produce net useful chemical energy; it is equal to the
difference between the rate at which the plants in an ecosystem
produce useful chemical energy (GPP)
• The rate at which they use some of that energy during respiration.
Some net primary production goes toward growth and reproduction
of primary producers, while some is consumed by herbivores.
• Both gross and net primary production are in units of mass / area /
time. In terrestrial ecosystems, mass of carbon per unit area per year
(g C/m2/yr) is most often used as the unit of measurement.
• Secondary productivity
• Net productivity
 14
Desert

Scrub

315
Open ocean

563
Tundra

630
Continental

1575
shelf

Lakes and

2250
streams

Temperate

2250
grass lands

Woodlands
2700

Agricultural
2925

lands
Productivity status (KCal/sq. m/yr)

Savannah
3150

Coniferous
3600

forest

Temperate
5850

forest
Why algae are the best producers?

Tropical forest
9000

Swamps
9000

Estuary
9000
Why biodiversity is rich in the tropics?
Ecology vs Economy :Development