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.
Your Welcome.
How about let's just forget about that other stuff and be friends?
And my internet connection isn't very good so I can't see the pictures.
Answer:
<em>I</em><em> </em><em>am</em><em> </em><em>giving</em><em> </em><em>u</em><em> </em><em>some</em><em> </em><em>explanation</em><em> </em><em>related</em><em> </em><em>this</em><em> </em><em>question</em><em> </em><em>pls</em><em> </em><em>see</em><em> </em><em>that</em><em> </em>
<em>it</em><em> </em><em>may</em><em> </em><em>help</em><em> </em><em>u</em>
Explanation:
The pH scale measures how acidic an object is. Objects that are not very acidic are called basic. The scale has values ranging from zero (the most acidic) to 14 (the most basic). As you can see from the pH scale above, pure water has a pH value of 7. This value is considered neutral—neither acidic or basic. Normal, clean rain has a pH value of between 5.0 and 5.5, which is slightly acidic. However, when rain combines with sulfur dioxide or nitrogen oxides—produced from power plants and automobiles—the rain becomes much more acidic. Typical acid rain has a pH value of 4.0. A decrease in pH values from 5.0 to 4.0 means that the acidity is 10 times greater.
How pH is Measured
There are many high-tech devices that are used to measure pH in laboratories. One easy way that you can measure pH is with a strip of litmus paper. When you touch a strip of litmus paper to something, the paper changes color depending on whether the substance is acidic or basic. If the paper turns red, the substance is acidic, and if it turns blue, the substance is basic