5-Ecosystems

5.L.2.1 Compare the characteristics of several common ecosystems, including estuaries and salt marshes, oceans, lakes and ponds, forests, and grasslands. 5.L.2.2 Classify the organisms within an ecosystem according to the function they serve: producers, consumers, or decomposers (biotic factors). 5.L.2.3 Infer the effects that may result from the interconnected relationship of plants and animals to their ecosystem. || ===‍‍‍Literacy Standard**/Mathematical Practice(s)**===
 * ===**Essential Standard/Clarifying Objective(s)**===
 * 5.L.2 Understand the interdependence of plants and animals with their ecosystem. **
 * Math:**
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5.L.2.1 I can compare the characteristics of several common ecosystems.

 * ===**Recall the two types of ecosystems: terrestrial and aquatic.**===
 * ===**Examine the different types of terrestrial ecosystems and their plants animals and climate.**===
 * ===Forests: deciduous, rain forest===
 * ===Grasslands===
 * ===Examine the different types of aquatic ecosystems and their plants, animals and temperature.===
 * ===Freshwater: Lakes and ponds===
 * ===Saltwater: Oceans, estuaries, and saltwater marshes===

**5.L.2.2. I can classify the organisms within an ecosystem according to their functions.**

 * ===**Review the different roles organisms play in an ecosystem: producers, consumers, decomposers.**===
 * ===Classify organisms within an ecosystem according to their functions.===
 * ===**Create a visual representation of the various ecosystems, as well as graphic representations of the food chains and webs, cycles and energy pyramids that are commonly associated with ecosystems**===

5.L.2.3. I can infer the cause/effect relationship of plants and animals to their ecosystem.

 * ===**Review the interconnected relationships of all organisms in an ecosystem.**===
 * ===**Infer the cause/effect relationship of plants and animals to their ecosystem.**===

‍‍‍**Instructional Resources**
5. L.2.1 Students know that there are different types of ecosystems (terrestrial and aquatic). These ecosystems can be divided into two types according to their characteristics: Land-based ecosystems include forests and grasslands. //Forests //have many trees (with needles or with leaves), shrubs, grasses and ferns, and a variety of animals. They usually get more rain than grasslands. Diverse types of animals can be found in forests, depending on their type. Deciduous: black bear, deer, red fox, vole, rabbit, cardinal. Rain forest: panther, monkeys, capybara, snakes, spiders. Temperatures in the forests may vary depending on where the forest is located. //Grasslands //have fertile soil and are covered with tall grasses. They usually get a medium amount of rain, but less than forests. Temperatures may also vary depending on where the grassland is located. Some examples of animals that live in the grasslands are prairie dogs, bison, and grasshoppers. Water-based ecosystems may be fresh water (lakes and ponds) or saltwater (oceans, estuaries and saltwater marshes). //Lakes //and //ponds// are bodies of freshwater that are surrounded by land. Ponds are usually shallower than lakes and the temperature of the water usually stays the same from top to bottom. Plants and algae usually grow along the edges where the water is shallow. Some examples of animals may be different types of fish, amphibians, ducks, turtles, or beavers. //Oceans //are large bodies of saltwater divided by continents. Oceans have many types of ecosystems depending on the conditions (sunlight, temperature, depth, salinity) of that part of the ocean. Most organisms live where the ocean is shallow (from the shoreline to the continental shelf) because sunlight can reach deep and the water is warm making food abundant. Some examples of organisms that live in the shallow ocean are drifters (jellyfish or seaweed), swimmers (fish), crawlers (crabs), and those anchored to the ocean floor (corals). Some organisms live in the open ocean, near the surface or down to the deep ocean bottom. Plankton floats in the upper regions of the water. Some organisms swim to the surface to find food or for air (whales, turtles, sharks) while others live closer to the bottom (certain fish, octopus, tubeworms). Students know typical visual representations of the various ecosystems, as well as graphic representations of the food chains and webs, cycles and energy pyramids that are commonly associated with ecosystems. 5.L.2.2 <span style="font-family: 'Cambria','serif';">Students know that organisms in an ecosystem can be producers, consumers, or decomposers. Students know that producers convert energy from the sun into organic matter through the process of photosynthesis. This organic matter is used by producers and consumers as food which provides the energy that fuels basic life processes. Consumers sometimes consume only or mostly other consumers as a food source. Producers and consumers produce wastes as they perform their life processes, and become waste organic matter when they die. Decomposers use these waste materials and other non living organic matter to fuel their life processes and recycle nutrients that are necessary for producers to carry out their life processes. <span style="font-family: 'Cambria','serif';">5.L.2.3 <span style="font-family: 'Cambria','serif';">Students know that all of the organisms in an ecosystem have interconnected relationships. Students know that because of this, factors that impact one population within an ecosystem may impact other populations within that ecosystem. <span style="font-family: 'Cambria','serif';">NC Science Essential Standards; Life Science Domain; Ecosystems Strand <span style="font-family: 'Cambria','serif';">Atlas of Science Literacy Volume2, Diversity of Life p.31 & Interdependence of Life p.33 <span style="font-family: 'Cambria','serif';">Ecosystem [] <span style="font-family: 'Cambria','serif';">Ecology vocabulary GO [] <span style="font-family: 'Cambria','serif';">Qwiki graphic organizers: <span style="font-family: 'Cambria','serif';">Ecosystem [|http://www.qwiki.com/q/#/Ecosystem] <span style="font-family: 'Cambria','serif';">What is an Ecosystem? []
 * <span style="font-family: 'Cambria','serif';">Unpacked Content **//<span style="font-family: 'Cambria','serif'; font-size: 13px;">(for students) //
 * //<span style="font-family: 'Cambria','serif';">Terrestrial //**
 * //<span style="font-family: 'Cambria','serif';">Aquatic //**

‍‍‍**Notes and Additional Information**

 * <span style="font-family: 'Cambria','serif';">Science For All Americans **//<span style="font-family: 'Cambria','serif'; font-size: 13px;">(minimum ADULT content knowledge) //

<span style="font-family: 'Cambria','serif';">INTERDEPENDENCE OF LIFE <span style="font-family: 'Cambria','serif';">Every species is linked, directly or indirectly, with a multitude of others in an ecosystem. Plants provide food, shelter, and nesting sites for other organisms. For their part, many plants depend upon animals for help in reproduction (bees pollinate flowers, for instance) and for certain nutrients (such as minerals in animal waste products). All animals are part of food webs that include plants and animals of other species (and sometimes the same species). The predator/prey relationship is common, with its offensive tools for predators—teeth, beaks, claws, venom, etc.—and its defensive tools for prey—camouflage to hide, speed to escape, shields or spines to ward off, irritating substances to repel. Some species come to depend very closely on others (for instance, pandas or koalas can eat only certain species of trees). Some species have become so adapted to each other that neither could survive without the other (for example, the wasps that nest only in figs and are the only insect that can pollinate them). <span style="font-family: 'Cambria','serif';">There are also other relationships between organisms. Parasites get nourishment from their host organisms, sometimes with bad consequences for the hosts. Scavengers and decomposers feed only on dead animals and plants. And some organisms have mutually beneficial relationships—for example, the bees that sip nectar from flowers and incidentally carry pollen from one flower to the next, or the bacteria that live in our intestines and incidentally synthesize some vitamins and protect the intestinal lining from germs. <span style="font-family: 'Cambria','serif';">But the interaction of living organisms does not take place on a passive environmental stage. Ecosystems are shaped by the nonliving environment of land and water—solar radiation, rainfall, mineral concentrations, temperature, and topography. The world contains a wide diversity of physical conditions, which creates a wide variety of environments: freshwater and oceanic, forest, desert, grassland, tundra, mountain, and many others. In all these environments, organisms use vital earth resources, each seeking its share in specific ways that are limited by other organisms. In every part of the habitable environment, different organisms vie for food, space, light, heat, water, air, and shelter. The linked and fluctuating interactions of life forms and environment compose a total ecosystem; understanding any one part of it well requires knowledge of how that part interacts with the others. <span style="font-family: 'Cambria','serif';">The interdependence of organisms in an ecosystem often results in approximate stability over hundreds or thousands of years. As one species proliferates, it is held in check by one or more environmental factors: depletion of food or nesting sites, increased loss to predators, or invasion by parasites. If a natural disaster such as flood or fire occurs, the damaged ecosystem is likely to recover in a succession of stages that eventually results in a system similar to the original one. <span style="font-family: 'Cambria','serif';">The interdependence of organisms in an ecosystem often results in approximate stability over hundreds or thousands of years. As one species proliferates, it is held in check by one or more environmental factors: depletion of food or nesting sites, increased loss to predators, or invasion by parasites. If a natural disaster such as flood or fire occurs, the damaged ecosystem is likely to recover in a succession of stages that eventually results in a system similar to the original one. <span style="font-family: 'Cambria','serif';">Like many complex systems, ecosystems tend to show cyclic fluctuations around a state of approximate equilibrium. In the long run, however, ecosystems inevitably change when climate changes or when very different new species appear as a result of migration or evolution (or are introduced deliberately or inadvertently by humans). <span style="font-family: 'Cambria','serif';">FLOW OF MATTER AND ENERGY <span style="font-family: 'Cambria','serif';">However complex the workings of living organisms, they share with all other natural systems the same physical principles of the conservation and transformation of matter and energy. Over long spans of time, matter and energy are transformed among living things, and between them and the physical environment. In these grand-scale cycles, the total amount of matter and energy remains constant, even though their form and location undergo continual change. <span style="font-family: 'Cambria','serif';">Almost all life on earth is ultimately maintained by transformations of energy from the sun. Plants capture the sun's energy and use it to synthesize complex, energy-rich molecules (chiefly sugars) from molecules of carbon dioxide and water. These synthesized molecules then serve, directly or indirectly, as the source of energy for the plants themselves and ultimately for all animals and decomposer organisms (such as bacteria and fungi). This is the food web: The organisms that consume the plants derive energy and materials from breaking down the plant molecules, use them to synthesize their own structures, and then are themselves consumed by other organisms. At each stage in the food web, some energy is stored in newly synthesized structures and some is dissipated into the environment as heat produced by the energy-releasing chemical processes in cells. A similar energy cycle begins in the oceans with the capture of the sun's energy by tiny, plant-like organisms. Each successive stage in a food web captures only a small fraction of the energy content of organisms it feeds on. <span style="font-family: 'Cambria','serif';">The elements that make up the molecules of living things are continually recycled. Chief among these elements are carbon, oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen, sulfur, phosphorus, calcium, sodium, potassium, and iron. These and other elements, mostly occurring in energy-rich molecules, are passed along the food web and eventually are recycled by decomposers back to mineral nutrients usable by plants. Although there often may be local excesses and deficits, the situation over the whole earth is that organisms are dying and decaying at about the same rate as that at which new life is being synthesized. That is, the total living biomass stays roughly constant, there is a cyclic flow of materials from old to new life, and there is an irreversible flow of energy from captured sunlight into dissipated heat. <span style="font-family: 'Cambria','serif';">An important interruption in the usual flow of energy apparently occurred millions of years ago when the growth of land plants and marine organisms exceeded the ability of decomposers to recycle them. The accumulating layers of energy-rich organic material were gradually turned into coal and oil by the pressure of the overlying earth. The energy stored in their molecular structure we can now release by burning, and our modern civilization depends on immense amounts of energy from such fossil fuels recovered from the earth. By burning fossil fuels, we are finally passing most of the stored energy on to the environment as heat. We are also passing back to the atmosphere—in a relatively very short time—large amounts of carbon dioxide that had been removed from it slowly over millions of years. <span style="font-family: 'Cambria','serif';">The amount of life any environment can sustain is limited by its most basic resources: the inflow of energy, minerals, and water. Sustained productivity of an ecosystem requires sufficient energy for new products that are synthesized (such as trees and crops) and also for recycling completely the residue of the old (dead leaves, human sewage, etc.). When human technology intrudes, materials may accumulate as waste that is not recycled. When the inflow of resources is insufficient, there is accelerated soil leaching, desertification, or depletion of mineral reserves.