Introduction to Ecosystems

The objectives for today's lesson were:

- to be able to define the term 'ecosystem'
- to recognise that ecosystems can be any size
- to understand that energy flows are crucial to an ecosystem
- to be able to list the main inputs, processes and outputs of an ecosystem

The lesson focuses on Key Question 4.1 from the exam specification:



Here is a copy of the image we used for the memory game. You could try to draw your own copy without looking at the screen and then check back to see how much you have remembered.



You should make sure that you know the definitions of the key words we used today:

Ecosystem: A system of links between plants and animals (the living, or biotic, community) and the habitats where they live, including the non-living, or abiotic, environment.

Photosynthesis: The process whereby plants take in the sun's energy with carbon dioxide and water to produce energy, oxygen and plant tissue.

Food web: The transfer of energy through an ecosystem from primary producers to consumers and decomposers.

A food chain shows how each living gets its food - i.e. who eats what (or who). A food chain always starts with a green plant. A food web consists of many ood chains. A food chain follows only one path (eg. a hawk eats a snake, which has eaten a frog, which has eaten a grasshopper, which has eaten grass) whereas a food web shows the many different oaths through which plants and animals are connected (eg. a hawk might also eat a mouse, a squirrel, a frog or some other animal; the snake may eat a beetle, a caterpillar, or some other animal, and so on for all the other animals in the food chain).

The PowerPoint from the lesson is here:

Make sure that you can name at least 3 inputs, processes and outputs of a named ecosystem. Here are some examples for a British Woodland ecosystem:

Inputs: sunshine, rainfall, air, soil, fertiliser
Processes: photosynthesis, tree clearance, reproduction
Outputs: water into rivers, evapotranspiration, timber