When it comes to ecosystems, a mountain, a river, and a cloud have more in common than you might think. Abiotic factors have specific and important roles in nature because they help shape and define ecosystems.
Biotic and Abiotic Factors
An ecosystem is defined as any community of living and non-living things that work together. Ecosystems do not have clear boundaries, and it may be difficult to see where one ecosystem ends and another begins. In order to understand what makes each ecosystem unique, we need to look at the biotic and abiotic factors within them. Biotic factors are all of the living organisms within an ecosystem. These may be plants, animals, fungi, and any other living things. Abiotic factors are all of the non-living things in an ecosystem.
Both biotic and abiotic factors are related to each other in an ecosystem, and if one factor is changed or removed, it can affect the entire ecosystem. Abiotic factors are especially important because they directly affect how organisms survive.
Examples of Abiotic Factors
Abiotic factors come in all types and can vary among different ecosystems. For example, abiotic factors found in aquatic systems may be things like water depth, pH, sunlight, turbidity (amount of water cloudiness), salinity (salt concentration), available nutrients (nitrogen, phosphorous, etc.), and dissolved oxygen (amount of oxygen dissolved in the water). Abiotic variables found in terrestrial ecosystems can include things like rain, wind, temperature, altitude, soil, pollution, nutrients, pH, types of soil, and sunlight.
The boundaries of an individual abiotic factor can be just as unclear as the boundaries of an ecosystem. Climate is an abiotic factor - think about how many individual abiotic factors make up something as large as a climate. Natural disasters, such as earthquakes, volcanoes, and forest fires, are also abiotic factors. These types of abiotic factors certainly have drastic effects on the ecosystems they encounter.
A special type of abiotic factor is called a limiting factor. Limiting factors keep populations within an ecosystem at a certain level. They may also limit the types of organisms that inhabit that ecosystem. Food, shelter, water, and sunlight are just a few examples of limiting abiotic factors that limit the size of populations. In a desert environment, these resources are even scarcer, and only organisms that can tolerate such tough conditions survive there. In this way, the limiting factors are also limiting which organisms inhabit this ecosystem.
Answer by YourHope:
Hi! :)
Which definition of "coarse" matches its use in the phrase "coarse focus?"
A) "rough in texture"
Have a BEAUTIFUL day~
Answer:
ExpC
H
4
+
2
O
2
→
C
O
2
+
2
H
2
O
This is the balanced reaction equation for the combustion of methane.
Explanation:
The Law of Conservation of Mass basically states that matter can neither be created nor destroyed. As such, we must be able to show this in our chemical reaction equations.
If you look at the equation above, you'll see an arrow that separates the reaction equation into two parts. This represents the direction of the reaction.
To the left of the arrow, we have our reactants.
To the right of the arrow, we have our products.
The quantity of each individual element in the left must equal the quantity of each individual element in the right.
So if you look below, you'll see the unbalanced equation, and I'll try to explain how to balance the reaction.
C
H
4
+
O
2
→
C
O
2
+
H
2
O
Our reactants in this equation are
C
H
4
and
O
2
.
Our next step is to break these down into individual atoms.
We have:
1 C atom, 4 H atoms & 2 O atoms.
If you're confused by this, look to see the little number to the bottom right of each element, the subscript, and it tells you how many of each atom are in the molecule. Make sense?
Now we look to the other side of the equation.
Here we see our products are
C
O
2
+
H
2
O
Again, we break these down into individual atoms again.
We have:
1 C atom, 2 H atom, 3 O atom
