What Makes a Healthy Ecosystem?
An Ecosystem is made up of many organic and inorganic elements. Inorganic elements are non living, eg rocks, wind/air, water, trees, sand and sunlight. Organic elements are living things such as animals, seaweed, kelp and kina. All ecosystems must have producers, consumers, decomposers and inorganic matters in order to keep the ecosystem healthy.
Producers are plants that create food and energy for other animals in order to give them growth and life. The producers absorb energy from rain and sunlight and that same energy gets carried on. Examples of producers are kelp, seaweed, grass and other plants that give consumers food. Producers not only produce food and energy for consumers but they also produce it for themselves. They make their own food and energy, whereas consumers feed off other plants to get theirs.
Consumers are animals. They feed off producers and other consumers. Consumers are organic animals such as lions, snakes, rats, kinas etc. Majority of consumers are herbivores, others are carnivores. When the producers get their energy from rain and sunlight the consumers eat the producers and that same energy gets carried on. When other consumers get there energy from the producers other consumers can still eat other consumers and all that same energy gets carried through them.
Decomposers are also organic elements such as fungi and bacteria that break down dead matter. Decomposers are important to have in an ecosystem because if they didn’t have any, plants would not get any essential nutrients and dead matter and waste would just pile up.
Every part of an ecosystem has an important job whether they are organic or inorganic. If one part of the ecosystem becomes unbalanced then the entire thing gets affected. An ecosystem is very fragile and can’t cope with very big change within bad weather. If a storm occurred in an ecosystem it would harm it.
Kina Barrens:
A kina barren is an area where the population of kina’s have overflowed. Kina barrens also live in an ecosystem. Kina Barrens happen when people have overfished big fish, and left fish that are too small to feed off the kina. If kina barrens keep happening they will eat all the kelp and there will be no more for fish to breed or hide from predators.
Food Chains:
Food chains live in an ecosystem, a food chain is where consumers (animals) eat producers (plants) other consumers eat other consumers and then when they die the decomposers break them down and the food chain starts all over again, they all carry through the same energy that the producers started off with. An example of a food chain: Kelp gets energy from sunlight, then kina eat the kelp, crayfish eat the kina, carpet sharks eat crayfish, and then other sharks eat carpet sharks.
All parts that I have just explained are important in an ecosystem and they all have big part in it in order to keep the ecosystem healthy.
Since term one this year we have been writing about what makes a healthy ecosystem. Our WALT was to use the correct structure for an explanation. In our writing we had to include decomposers, producers, consumers and inorganic matters. I think I did really well because I explained the meanings those really well and I was very descriptive. Next time I think I could work on finishing it a lot quicker :)
