MAN, AND THE ENVIRONMENT

BIOL351

Environmental Systems

DR. SAID AL-KHALASI

UNESCO CHAIR ON AFLAJ STUDIES-
ARCHAEOHYDROLOGY UNIVERSITY
OF NIZWA
Chapter 3
Environmental Systems: Matter, Energy,
and Ecosystems
 This chapter will help you understand:

Environmental systems
Fundamentals of matter and chemistry
Energy and energy flow
Photosynthesis
Ecosystems and interactions
Fundamentals of landscape ecology
Ecosystems services
Various chemical cycles
Lecture 1
 Earth’s environmental systems

Understanding human impacts on the environment requires understanding

complex environmental systems
A system
A network of relationships among components that interact with and influence
the another
Exchange of energy, matter, or information.
Receives inputs of energy, matter, or information; processes these inputs; and
produces outputs.
Q1 fill in the gap with one word.
..................... is a network of relationships among components that interact with and influence
the another .
 Environmental systems
interact
Structural spheres of Earth’s systems
Lithosphere – rock and sediment
Atmosphere – the air surrounding the planet
Hydrosphere – all water on Earth
Biosphere – the planet’s living organisms plus the abiotic
(nonliving) parts they interact with
Categorizing systems allows humans to understand Earth’s
complexity.
Q2 Multiple choice .
Hydrosphere is :
a. Rock and sediment.
b. The air surrounding the planet.
c. All the water on Earth.
Matter, chemistry and the environment
Matter
All material in the universe that has mass and occupies space
It can be solid, liquid or gas.
Chemistry
Study of types of matter and their interactions
Is crucial for understanding how:
Chemicals affect the health of wildlife and people
Pollutants cause acid precipitation.
Synthetic chemicals thin the ozone layer.
How gases contribute to global climate change
Atoms and elements are chemical
building blocks(Cont.d)
Atom
Smallest component of and element
The atom’s nucleus (center) includes
Protons (positively charged particles)
Neutrons (lacking electric charge)
Surrounding the nucleus are
Electrons (negatively charged particles)
Atomic number
The number of protons
Mass number
Protons plus neutrons (particles in nucleus)
Q3 fill in the gap
………….are negatively charged particles.
Solution
Elements, molecules, and compounds come together with no chemical bounding
Examples
Air is a solution containing O2,N2, H2O, CO2, methane ( CH4), ozone (O3).
Human blood, ocean water, plant sap, metal alloys
Q4 fill in the gap.
…………….. are elements, molecules, and compounds come together with no chemical bounding.
Lecture 2
* Hydrocarbons
Organic compounds that contain only carbon and hydrogen
* The simplest hydrocarbon is methane ( natural gas)
* Fossil fuels consist of hydrocarbons
* Crude oil contains hundreds of types of hydrocarbons
Q5 chose one answer from the following
The simplest hydrocarbon organic compound is :
A. Ethane
B. Methane
C. Naphthalene
Polymers
Long chains of repeated organic compounds
Play key roles as building blocks of life
Three essential types of polymers
Proteins
Nucleic acids
Carbohydrates
Lipids are not polymers, but they are also essential
Fats, oils, phospholipids, waxes, steroids
Macromolecules
Large molecules essential to life
Macromolecules are building blocks of
life (cont’d)
Proteins
Long chains of amino acids
Comprise most of an organism’s matter
Produce tissues, provide structural support, store energy, transport material
Some are components of the immune system or hormones (chemical messengers)
Can serve as enzymes
Molecules that catalyze (promote) chemical reactions
Animals use proteins to skin, hair, muscles and tendons.
 Macromolecules are building blocks of
life (cont’d)
Nucleic acids
Long chains of nucleotides that contain sugar,
phosphate, and a nitrogen base
Deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) and ribonucleic acid
(RNA) carry hereditary information of organisms
Genes
Regions of DNA that code for
Proteins that perform certain functions
Q5 True or Fales
Deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) and ribonucleic acid (RNA) carry hereditary information of
organisms.
Carbohydrates
Include simple sugars and large molecules of simple sugars bonded together.
Glucose fuels cells and builds complex carbohydrates.
Plants store energy in starch, a complex carbohydrate .
Animals eat plants to get starch
Organisms build structures from complex carbohydrates
Chitin forms hells of insects and crustaceans.
Chitin forms shells of insects and crustaceans.
Lipids
Do not dissolve in water
Fats and oils (energy), waxes (structure), steroids.
Organisms use cells to compartmentalize
macromolecules
Cells
Most basic unit of organismal organization
Simplest component of all living things
Vary in size, shape, and function
Classified according to their structure
Eukaryotes: Plants, animals, fungi, protists
Contain a membrane-enclosed nucleus
Membrane-enclosed organelles do specific things
Prokaryotes: bacteria and archaea
Single-celled, lacking membrane-enclosed nucleus and organelles
Q6 True or False.
Eukaryotes like plants, animals, fungi and protists are containing a membrane-enclosed
nucleus.
Energy fundamentals
Energy
An intangible phenomenon that can change the position, physical composition, temperature of
matter
Involved in biological, chemical, physical processes
Potential energy – energy of position
Kinetic energy – energy of motion
Chemical energy
Potential energy held in the bonds between atoms
Changing potential into kinetic energy
Releases energy
Production motion, action, or heat
Energy is always conserved, but changes
in quality
First law of thermodynamics
Energy can change form but cannot be created or destroyed
Second law of thermodynamics
Energy changes from a more-ordered to a less-ordered state
Entropy: an increasing state of disorder
Living organisms resist entropy by getting energy from food and photosynthesis
Dead organisms get no energy and through decomposition lose their organize structure
Lecture 3
Light energy from the sun powers most
living systems (Cont’d)
Autotrophs ( producers)
Organisms that use the sun’s energy to produce their own food
Plants, algae, cyanobacteria
Photosynthesis
The process of turning the sun’s light energy into high-quality chemical energy
Sunlight converts carbon dioxide and water into sugars
Moving to lower entropy
Q7 True or False
Energy can change form but cannot be created or destroyed
Ecosystem
All organisms and nonliving entities occurring and interacting in particular area.
Animals, plants, water, soil, nutrients, et.
Biological entities
Tightly intertwined with the chemical and physical aspects of their environment.
Q8 fill in the gap.
All organisms and nonliving entities occurring and interacting in particular area is called
………………….
The water cycle affects all other cycles
Water is essential for biochemical reactions and is involved in nearly every
environmental system and cycle
Hydrologic cycle
The flow of liquid/gaseous/ solid water through environment
More than 97% of water is in oceans
Less than 1% is readily available fresh water
Evaporation – conversion of liquid to gaseous water
Transpiration – release of water vapor by plants
Precipitation – return of water to Earth’s surface in the form of rain/snow
Water is also stored underground
Infiltration
Water soaks down through rock and soil to recharge aquifers
Aquifers
Underground reservoirs of sponge-like regions of rock and soil that hold
groundwater (water found underground beneath layers of soil)
Water table
The uppermost level of groundwater held in an aquifer
Water in aquifers may be ancient (thousand of years old)
Human impact on the water cycle
Humans have affected almost every aspect of the water cycle
Damming rivers slows water movement and increases evaporation
Removal of vegetation increase runoff and erosion while decreasing infiltration and transpiration
Overdrawing surface and groundwater for agriculture, industry, and domestic uses lowers water
tables
Emitting air pollutants that dissolve in water changes the nature of precipitation and decrease
cleansing
Q9 True or False.
Removal of vegetation increase runoff and erosion while decreasing infiltration and
transpiration.
 The carbon cycle circulates a vital
organic nutrient
Carbon cycle
Describes carbon’s route in the environment
Carbon forms essential biological molecules
Through photosynthesis, producers move carbon from the air and water to organisms
Respiration returns carbon to the air and water
Oceans are the second largest reservoir of carbon
Absorb carbon from the air, land, and organisms
Decomposition returns carbon to the sediment, the largest reservoir of carbon
Ultimately, it may be converted into fossil fuels
Human impact on the carbon cycle
Burning fossil fuels moves carbon from the ground
to the air
Since mid-1700s, people have added over 275
billion tons of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere
Cutting forests and burning fields moves carbon
from organisms to the air
Less carbon dioxide is removed by photosynthesis.
Today’s atmospheric carbon dioxide reservoir is
the largest in the past 800,000 years
The driving force behind anthropogenic global
climate change
Q10 True or False
Cutting forests and burning fields moves carbon from organisms to the air.
The nitrogen cycle involves specialized
bacteria
Nitrogen makes up 78% of the atmosphere
It is contained in proteins, DNA, and RNA
It is also essential for plant growth
Nitrogen cycle
Describes the routes of nitrogen through the
environment organisms
It needs lightning, bacteria, or human
intervention to become biologically active and
available to organisms
Then it is a potent fertilizer
The nitrogen cycle involves specialized
bacteria (Cont’d)
Nitrogen fixation
Nitrogen-fixing soil bacteria or lightning “fixes” nitrogen gas into ammonium
Nitrogen-fixing bacteria live in legumes (e.g soybeans)
Nitrification
Bacteria then convert ammonium ions first into nitrite ions then into nitrate ions that plants can
take up
Animals obtain nitrogen by eating plants or other animals
Denitrification – completes the nitrogen cycle
Denitrifying bacteria convert nitrates in soil or water to gaseous nitrogen, releasing it back into
the atmosphere
We have greatly influenced the nitrogen
Historically, nitrogen fixation was a bottleneck: limited the flux of nitrogen from air into water-
soluble forms
Industrial fixation – fixes nitrogen on a massive scale.
Human alteration of nitrogen cycle
Overwhelms nature’s denitrification abilities
Excess nitrogen leads to hypoxia in coastal areas
Nitrogen-based fertilizers strip the soil of other nutrients, thereby reducing soil fertility.
Burning forests and fossil fuels leads to acid precipitation, adds greenhouse gases, and creates
photochemical smog.
Q11 True or False
Burning forests and fossil fuels leads to acid precipitation, adds greenhouse gases, and creates
photochemical smog.
Conclusion
Life interacts with its abiotic environment in ecosystems through which energy flows
and materials are recycled
Understanding biogeochemical cycles is crucial
Humans are changing the ways those cycles' function
Understanding energy, energy flow, and chemistry increase our understanding of
organisms
How environmental systems function
Thinking in terms of systems
Can teach us how to avoid disrupting Earth’s processes and to mitigate any
disruptions we cause.