Ecosystem is a word often thrown around when talking about the environment. What is an ecosystem? What makes it up, and what does it really do for us? This is something I recently learned a lot about in my ESA 200 class.
An ecosystem is made up of natural materials. Natural Materials means either Biotic or abiotic. Biotic materials are all of the living things in the ecosystem, including all plants and animals. Abiotic is pretty much everything else in the ecosystem such as the air, water, and minerals.
Next up in an ecosystem are the natural recourses. They consist of renewable and non renewable. Non renewable are recourses that we can not grow back or replenish and deplete with use. An example would be fossil flues. Renewable recourses on the other hand can be replenished and are capable of regeneration. Examples of regeneration include things such as the re-growth of trees, plants, and animals.
Renewable recourses have two types thought. Besides the materials that I mentioned before renewable recourses consist of ecosystem services. Ecosystem services are things that the ecosystem provides for us. They do three things in general. The first is that they sustain life. This would be like food production of photosynthesis by plants, and decomposers returning the nutrients to the soil so it can again thrive. The next is regulating natural processed. This would be something like the water cycle and nutrient cycles. The last things ecosystem services provide would be sustaining culture, which is different than sustaining life. In this one nature serves as a source of inspiration as well as learning for things like artistic and spiritual reasons, also educational activities.
Ecosystems do a lot of things and encompass many materials and recources. They play a huge role in the environmental, and should be properly taken care of and respected because we rely on them for a lot more than we know.
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