Ecosystems can be as large as a desert or as small as a puddle.
They contain biotic
or living parts, as well as abiotic factors
, or nonliving parts. Biotic factors include plants, animals, and other organisms.
Nonliving materials include water, rocks, soil, and sand.
Ecosystems are a chain of interactions between organisms and their environment.
Each organism has a "job" to do in the ecosystem. For example, plants have chloroplasts that enable them to harvest light energy. Then, they take carbon dioxide and water from their environment to convert them into sugar.
Many ecosystems become degraded through human impacts, such as soil loss, air and water pollution, habitat fragmentation
, water diversion, fire suppression, and introduced species
and invasive species
.
An ecosystem includes all the living things (plants, animals and organisms) in a given area, interacting with each other, and with their non-living environments (weather, earth, sun, soil, climate, atmosphere). In an ecosystem, each organism has its own niche or role to play.
