The British Woodland Ecosystem

The lesson objectives were:

- To know the main features of a British Woodland ecosystem and how they link to each other.
- To be able to construct a food web for the British Woodland ecosystem.
- To know that the ecosystem is under threat from human interference.

This lesson addresses Key Question 4.2 from the exam specification.



You need to be able to give examples of plants and animals at each level of the ecosystem. The Forestry Commission website hosts several webcams that will give you an insight into how the British Woodland ecosystem operates. You can see videos and webcams showing some of the animals that live in the forest here. There is a factsheet about some of the animals in the New Forest here.

The BBC Bitesize revision pages contain useful information about the links between the components of ecosystems. Make sure that you can define the key terms from today's lesson: producer, consumer, herbivore, carnivore, decomposer, trophic level.

Producer: Usually a green plant that produces its own food by photosynthesis.

Primary Consumers: Animals that consume only plant matter. They are herbivores - eg rabbits, caterpillars, cows, sheep, and deer.
Secondary Consumers: Animals that eat primary consumers (herbivores).
Tertiary Consumers: Animals that eat secondary consumers (i.e. carnivores that feed on other carnivores).

Decomposers: Organisms such as bacteria and fungi that break down dead organisms and their wastes. They do not 'eat' the food like scavengers, as they have no mouth-parts. Instead they break down solid matter into liquids which they can absorb. Examples: bacteria and some fungi.

Tropic Level: A trophic level is each level in a food chain. Matter is always 'lost' as heat energy at each trophic level.

There are several online interactive activities here and here which let you make your own food webs. If you have a printer connected to your PC, it would be useful for you to print out the completed webs and stick them into your exercise book.

Here is the worksheet we used to practice choropleth mapping skills. These skills are often tested in paper 1/2 in the final GCSE exams.