Learning About Food Webs and Energy Pyramids Summary

          In the world, there's many relationships and patterns that all species and beings go through. The circle of life involves many organisms chaining together to be able to receive what they need to survive. Each animal/plant is in a specific trophic level, the first one being a producer, then primary consumer, secondary consumer, tertiary consumer, and finally the decomposes/scavengers. All these organisms form food chains, and eventually a food web which shows how member of different food chains interact with each other, forming a complicated set of relationships. At the producer level, they get energy from the sun and it goes up after that. Decomposers obtain energy from the left over energy from the tertiary consumers' waste. Also, there are 100 original units that come from the sun (photosynthesis) that the producer soaked up. Each level up, only about 10% is kept. The rest of it dispersed into heat. This means, that the organisms at the top of the pyramid get less energy as it passes on.

 



          This is an example of a food web, and it shows all the interconnections of all these sea animals. As you can see, there are 5 trophic levels in each food chain. For example, the green algae is a producer, the oysters are primary consumers, the emperor angel fish is a secondary consumer, the killer whale is a tertiary consumer, and finally the sea urchins are scavengers. Each organisms receives an even smaller fraction of energy, as it goes up.

          This food web is a part of the ocean biome, so it includes animals like whales, krill, octopus, turtles, and much more. In the ocean, there's a not a lot of producers that can get too much of the sun rays so its more difficult to pass on energy. In conclusion, people should eat vegetables and everything that comes from plants to get enough energy the first time, rather than having to consume more of higher levels. Its healthier, and also doesn't kill as many animals.

        

 

 

Ecological Footprint Summary

          The way this world works, there's got to be some kind of limit to the resources that we are using every single day. The ecological footprint measures how much area of biologically productive land and water an individual requires, in order to produce all the resources it consumes, and to absorb the waste it generates. The ecological footprint should always be lower than the biocapacity of the earth. Biocapacity is all the materials the earth can generate. As of now, if we keep doing what we're doing we will need 3 Earth's to support us when we only have one. Many problems would surface if that time comes. But, if we rapidly reduce all the things were using it will allow earth to last much longer. On the other hand, I learned my own ecological footprint. I was WAY over the capacity of one earth, so I decided to change some of my habits and I'm really proud of my changes and how big of a difference it really makes.