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An example of a topological food web (image courtesy of USDA) [1] The soil food web is the community of organisms living all or part of their lives in the soil. It describes a complex living system in the soil and how it interacts with the environment, plants, and animals. Food webs describe the transfer of energy between species in an ecosystem.
Energy flow is the flow of energy through living things within an ecosystem. [1] All living organisms can be organized into producers and consumers, and those producers and consumers can further be organized into a food chain. [2] [3] Each of the levels within the food chain is a trophic level. [1]
Nutrients in the soil are taken up by the plant through its roots, and in particular its root hairs.To be taken up by a plant, a nutrient element must be located near the root surface; however, the supply of nutrients in contact with the root is rapidly depleted within a distance of ca. 2 mm. [14] There are three basic mechanisms whereby nutrient ions dissolved in the soil solution are brought ...
A simplified food web illustrating a three-trophic food chain (producers-herbivores-carnivores) linked to decomposers. The movement of mineral nutrients through the food chain, into the mineral nutrient pool, and back into the trophic system illustrates ecological recycling. The movement of energy, in contrast, is unidirectional and noncyclic ...
Water is a critical agent in soil development due to its involvement in the dissolution, precipitation, erosion, transport, and deposition of the materials of which a soil is composed. [39] The mixture of water and dissolved or suspended materials that occupy the soil pore space is called the soil solution. Since soil water is never pure water ...
The water content of most vegetal detritus ranges from 60% to 90%. The dry matter consists mainly of carbon, oxygen, and hydrogen. Although these three elements make up about 92% of the dry weight of the organic matter in the soil, other elements present are essential for the nutrition of plants, including nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium ...
With the loss of photosynthetic plants covering and cooling the surface of the soil, the infrared energy penetrates the soil heating it up and causing a rise in heterotrophic bacteria. Heterotrophs in the soil quickly degrade the organic matter and soil structure crumbles, thus it dissolves into streams and rivers into the sea.
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 flesh, then omnivores that eat both plants and flesh, and so on). The highest level is the top of the food chain. Biomass can be measured by a bomb calorimeter.