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External factors, also called state factors, control the overall structure of an ecosystem and the way things work within it, but are not themselves influenced by the ecosystem. On broad geographic scales, climate is the factor that "most strongly determines ecosystem processes and structure".
Ecosystem services are ecologically mediated functional processes essential to sustaining healthy human societies. [6] Water provision and filtration, production of biomass in forestry, agriculture, and fisheries, and removal of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide (CO 2) from the atmosphere are examples of ecosystem services essential to public health and economic opportunity.
Ecosystems may be habitats within biomes that form an integrated whole and a dynamically responsive system having both physical and biological complexes. Ecosystem ecology is the science of determining the fluxes of materials (e.g. carbon, phosphorus) between different pools (e.g., tree biomass, soil organic material).
Ecosystem Functional Type (EFT) is an ecological concept to characterize ecosystem functioning. Ecosystem Functional Types are defined as groups of ecosystems or patches of the land surface that share similar dynamics of matter and energy exchanges between the biota and the physical environment .
A structural diagram of the open ocean plankton ecosystem model of Fasham, Ducklow & McKelvie (1990). [1]An ecosystem model is an abstract, usually mathematical, representation of an ecological system (ranging in scale from an individual population, to an ecological community, or even an entire biome), which is studied to better understand the real system.
Ecosystem function Net primary production Track from space. [7] Secondary production Nutrient retention Disturbance regime Track from space. [7] Should not be a candidate EBV, due to being non-biological in nature. [10] Ecosystem structure Habitat structure Ecosystem extent and fragmentation Track from space. [7]
[4] [21] Diversity can enhance the stability of ecosystem functions at various ecological scales. [22] For example, genetic diversity can enhance resistance to environmental perturbations. [ 23 ] At the community level, the structure of food webs can affect stability.
Affected by these changes, ecosystems can reorganise and still maintain the same function, structure, and identity. [227] However, under some circumstances, the ecosystem may undergo changes that modify the system’s structure and function and this process can be described as a shift to a new regime. [227] [228] [229] [226]