Zusammenfassung der Ressource
Ecology
- The Hydrosphere
- The hydrosphere is considered
also a layer of Earth's
structure, which covers 70%
of the entire planet surface.
The remaining 30% is land.
- The Water
Cycle
- The urban Water
Cycle
- Seawater
- Nearly 97% of the water on our planet is in the oceans, which are
large bodies of water stored in depressions of the Earth’s crust. We
distinguish three major oceans: Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian.
- Dynamics of
seawater
- The oceanic waters are never still, they are entities in continuous motion. The
most important movements are the waves, well known as the ripples on the sea
surface caused by wind action
- Continental
Water
- Lentic environments, which are those with
still water such as in swamps and aquifers.
Lotic environments where water is flowing
such as in groundwater streams, rivers,
streams, lakes and ponds.
- Physical, Political and Economic
Geography
- Economic geography helps to identify the type of markets and consumers, as to calculate
the production required to satisfy the goods needed to satisfy them.
- Human and Physical
Geography
- Anthropology helps us to see
the evolution of the human
being both biologically and
culturally, its religion, language or
traditions.
- Political science analyzes
the power of certain social
groups for making decisions
and achieving their goals.
- Economy studies
the products and
services that
meet our needs,
such as the
technology
consumption.
- History helps us to know
which events occurred to
our ancestors, for
example, the wars that
happened in a certain
region
- Demography
helps us
understand the
characteristics
of society, i.e.,
geographical
distribution,
immigration,
emigration, and
birth or death
rates.
- Colonial
geography
- Since ancient times several empires
have emerged, the Roman Empire was
one of them, which was the most
extensive, populated, powerful and
best organized of the Antiquity.
- Birth rate: indicates the number
of births recorded in a group
for every 1,000 people in a given
year.
- Mortality rate: indicates the
number recorded of deaths
recorded in a group for every
1,000 people in a given year.
- Infant mortality rate: number of
children dying before their first
year of life per 1,000 live births.
- Population growth rate: is the
rate at which the number of
individuals in a population
increases in a given time period
as a fraction of the initial
population, often expressed as a
percentage.
- Life expectancy: probable
duration of the life of a
person according to the
conditions under which
he/she was born and live.
- Literacy - illiteracy: number of
individuals aged 15 or over can (not)
read in a population, often
expressed as a percentage.
- Human sex ratio:
is the ratio of
males to females
in a population.
- Fertility rate:
average number
of offspring born
per woman.
- Political
Geography
- Political geography is a subdivision
of human geography, which was first
addressed in 1897, in a work of the
German Geographer Friedrich Ratzel
(1844-1904).
- Economical Geography
- Just as political, economic geography have a great presence
and power of influence in the world. This science is
responsible for studying everything related to goods’ needs,
production, and satisfaction.
- "the nagging feeling that
something is missing, that
moves us to act as to
make it disappear or at
least diminish"
- "obtaining satisfiers capable of
making human needs disappear."
- "goods and services that make
go away or lessen a human
need are called satisfaction.
- Primary sector covers
activities directly related to
natural resources such as
mining, oil and gas extraction,
agriculture, forestry and
fisheries.
- Secondary sector: In this
sector raw materials are
transformed into goods. It
comprises manufacturing,
metal-mechanic, electronic,
petrochemical, power, water
and other industries.
- Tertiary sector emerges from the
above sectors and covers activities
that do not produce tangible goods,
but services such as trading,
transport and communications.
- Human
Landscape
- Economics: The banning for consuming
certain foods in some religions prevents
the development of related activities.
- Politics: some of the
separatist movements were
motivated by religion, such as
conflicts in India, Yugoslavia or
Northern Ireland
- Social. Religion is also a bond
between nations, for
example, it has allowed the
unity of the Jewish people
until today.
- Cultural: religion has
inspired works of art in
every way.
- Ecology, a Multidisciplinary
Science
- Throughout history there have been many who have
given something to the ecology as a science, as in
the case of Aristotle, who was one of the first to
conclude that the Earth was round, based on the
observation of the stars, eclipses and tides.
- The Branches of
Ecology
- This branch analyses the mutual
interactions between the environment
and the organisms that dwell in it; that
is, the way the individual (a complete
organism, either a human, an insect, a
bacteria) changes its environment and in
turn is affected by it.
- Its field of study is
the community (set
of populations) and
the environment
that surrounds it
within a
geographical area.
- It deals with mass and energy
flows between organisms and
the abiotic components in
their environment, i.e.
ecosystem
- It studies a population in
terms of its environment
and relationships with other
populations.
- Method of
study
- Observe and measure phenomena or
characterization: perform
observations using the senses,
define and measure the phenomena
being studied.
- Form Hypothesis: theoretical, hypothetical
explanations of observations and
measurements of the subject of study or
phenomenon.
- Experiment: tests the predictions
done by the hypothesis in order to
prove it right or wrong.
- Make Conclusions: if the hypothesis
was proved correct, then it turns into a
theory or scientific knowledge. If wrong
a new hypothesis needs to be formed
or more observations, measurements
and experiments need to be performed.
- Environment
- Biotic and abiotic
factors Ecology is a
discipline within
Biology that tries to
understand the effect
of environmental
conditions in which
organisms such as
flora or fauna live.
- Biotic factors are any living components
in an ecosystem that affect organisms
in relationships like competition,
commensalism, parasitism predation,
and mutualism.
- Autotrophs: those that
produce their own food
(plants, algae), also
called producers.
- Heterotrophs: they are also called
"consumers", as they do not have
the ability to produce their own
food and therefore "consume"
those who do or “producers”. This
group includes animals and fungi.
- Decomposers: are
those that destroy
other organisms that
were once alive and
return chemical
elements to the soil
(fungi and bacteria).
This is a special kind
of heterotrophs.
- Abiotic factors refer to the physical and chemical conditions in the
environment, such as climate, temperature, salinity of water,
minerals in the soil.
- Carbon dioxide: This
chemical substance is the
basis of photosynthesis,
and, therefore, the
primary food source for
photosynthetic organisms.
- Soil: This is the main source of raw
materials that provide for the
photosynthetic process and the
basis of food production for the
rest of the environment.
- Water: It is necessary
for all chemical elements
to move across the
ecosystem in a
perennial cycle of
nutrition and
decomposition.
- Atmosphere: This is
the gaseous layer
(nitrogen, oxygen,
water vapor,
hydrogen, carbon
dioxide and other
gases) surrounding
the Earth’s crust.
- Solar Energy: The
energy that Earth
receives from the Sun,
in the form of
ultraviolet light, heat
and visible light. It is the
main source of energy
on Earth and precursor
of the photosynthetic
process.
- Population
- refers to "a group of
organisms of the same
species occupying a given
area and performing
genes exchange"
- Emergent
Properties
- Size: The number of organisms that make up a
population.
- Density: Describes how close individuals are with each other, i.e. the number of
organisms per unit of area or volume. It is a measure of the strength of competition for
resources between organisms.
- Distribution pattern: Refers
to the order of organisms in
a population
- Aggregated: when populations form
groups
- Random: randomly distributed on a territory. They are common in low-density populations
or endangered species
- Uniform: the pattern is regular, occurs in areas of
crops.
- Demographic
Parameters:
- Birth rate: indicates how many
individuals are born as a
consequence of reproduction and
how often.
- Mortality rate is the number of
individuals who die in a given time.
- Immigration rate: measurement of the
movement of individuals between
populations, specifically the number of
individuals entering the population.
- Emigration rate: measurement of the movement of individuals between populations,
specifically the number of individuals leaving the population.
- The population growth rate:it measures the result of births, deaths, immigration and
emigration that affect the size of the population changing over time.
- Population structure: This property indicates the configuration of the
population
- Factors that regulate population
growth
- Abiotic: prevent populations
from overgrowing, either
reducing their reproductive
capacity or dying. These
abiotic conditions can be
very intense, and are
considered natural
disasters because they
can have drastic effects
on populations.
- Biotic: there are factors that regulate the size of populations
- Competition: occurs
between organisms
that require the
same resources,
which are limited.
- Predation: is an organism that feeds
on another. This benefits one species
(the predator) and affects the other
(the prey).
- Mutuality: organisms
of different species
benefit mutually when
interacting
- Commensalism: one species is benefited in some
way
- ntrinsic factor: when
the population is high,
individuals develop high
mortality rates for
existing resources or
competition
- Extrinsic Factor: External biotic and abiotic
elements or populations that cause mortality
or inhibit reproduction
- Community
Ecology
- Communities are a set of
populations of different
species that interact and
share a common point in
space that is called
habitat
- re classified into
biomes
- vEmergent
Properties
- Species richness: the amount or the number of species forming a
community.
- Composition: the set of species that make up the
community
- Structure: refers to the way a community is
organized
- Horizontal stratification: indicates the distribution of organisms on Earth's
surface
- Vertical stratification: Differential distribution of
organisms
- Physiognomy: the visual aspect of the
species
- Diversity: As the name implies, is the variety of individuals that make up the
community.
- Successional status: is the development characteristics and recovery process after a
community disturbance.
- Succession
Dynamics
- This sequence starts with a
disturbance
- These disturbances
can be caused by
natural phenomena
such as earthquakes,
hurricanes, volcanic
eruptions, forest fires,
etc., or they can be
associated with human
activities such as
pollution, urbanization,
logging, etc...