This document discusses ecosystems and their conservation. It begins by defining an ecosystem as an area composed of biotic and abiotic factors that includes a biological community and its physical environment. It then discusses the importance of conserving ecosystems and biodiversity, as well as some of the threats they face from human activities and natural calamities. The document provides information on different types of ecosystems like forests, deserts, grasslands, and aquatic ecosystems. It highlights the roles of ecosystems and the need for their conservation.

1. 1
ECOSYSTEM
Aakansha
1216512101
B. Arch, Semester - 2
GSA, Gitam University,
Vishakhapatnam,
Andhra Pradesh

2. Abstract
An environmental study is the interdisciplinary academic
field which systematically studies human interaction with
the environment in the interests of solving complex
problems. It is a broad field of study that includes also
the natural environment, built environment, and the sets of
relationships between them. The field encompasses study
in basic principles of ecology and environmental science,
as well as associated subjects such as ethics, politics, law,
economics, philosophy, environmental
sociology and environmental justice, planning, pollution
control and natural resource management.
Ecosystem & its conservation are one of the major topics of
discussion among the environmentalists. Due to natural as
well as human activities, it is getting degraded from years
and if no precaution is taken for it, then it will not be
sustaining for the future generations and might slowly lead
to the depletion of the earth.
So, this report is to make all the people aware of about it,
so that it will lead to public awareness and its conservation
will become a world step and will prevent the ecosystem
and biodiversity from being depleted.
2

3. Introduction
The purpose of this report is to identify different types of
ecosystem and biodiversity and the types of threat it is
facing and will be facing in future due to human activities
as well as natural calamities
It also shows importance of ecosystem and biodiversity
and the factors influencing them.
It shows the effect of decline of ecosystem and
biodiversity.
Mainly this report highlights the different ways towards the
conservation of ecosystem and biodiversity.
3

4. CONTENTS
Sr No. TOPIC Pg No.
1. What is an ecosystem? 5
2. History and development 6
3. Geography of ecosystem 7
4. Types of ecosystem
i) Forest ecosystem……………………..
ii) Desert ecosystem…………………….
iii) Grassland ecosystem………………….
iv) Aquatic ecosystem……………………
8
9,10
11-13
14
15-18
5. Ecosystem process 19-21
6. Nutrient cycle 21-23
7. Role of an ecosystem 24
8. Function and biodiversity 25
9. Ecosystem management 26,27
10. Threats to ecosystem 28,29
11. Ecosystem conservation 30
12. conclusion 31
4

5. What is an ecosystem?
An ecosystem is an area composed of abiotic and biotic
factors. There are lots of kinds of ecosystems all around the
world.
An ecosystem consists of the biological community that
occurs in some locale, and the physical and chemical factors
that make up its non-living or abiotic environment. There are
many examples of ecosystems -- a pond, a forest, an
estuary, grassland.
The boundaries are not fixed in any objective way, although
sometimes they seem obvious, as with the shoreline of a
small pond.
Usually the boundaries of an ecosystem are chosen for
practical reasons having to do with the goals of the particular
study.
The study of ecosystems mainly consists of the study of
certain processes that link the living, or biotic, components
to the non-living, or abiotic, components. Energy
transformations and biogeochemical cycling are the
main processes that comprise the field of ecosystem
ecology.
Components of an Ecosystem
ABIOTIC COMPONENTS BIOTIC COMPONENTS
Sunlight Primary producers
Temperature Herbivores
Precipitation Carnivores
Water or moisture Omnivores
Soil or water chemistry (e.g., P, NH4+) Detritivores
etc. etc.
All of these vary over space/time
5

6. History and development
Arthur Tansley, a British ecologist, was the first person to use the
term "ecosystem" in a published work. Tansley devised the
concept to draw attention to the importance of transfers of
materials between organisms and their environment. He later
refined the term, describing it as "The whole system, including not
only the organism-complex, but also the whole complex of
physical factors forming what we call the environment". Tansley
regarded ecosystems not simply as natural units, but as mental
isolates. Tansley later defined the spatial extent of ecosystems
using the term ecotope.
G. Evelyn Hutchinson, a pioneering limnologist who was a
contemporary of Tansley's, combined Charles Elton's ideas
about trophic ecology with those of Russian
geochemist Vladimir Vernadsky to suggest that mineral
nutrient availability in a lake limited algal production which
would, in turn, limit the abundance of animals that feed on
algae. Raymond Lindeman took these ideas one step
further to suggest that the flow of energy through a lake was
the primary driver of the ecosystem.
Hutchinson's students, brothers Howard T. Odum and Eugene P.
Odum, further developed a "systems approach" to the study of
ecosystems, allowing them to study the flow of energy and material
through ecological system.
6

7. The Geography of Ecosystems
There are many different ecosystems: rain forests and
tundra, coral reefs and ponds, grasslands and deserts.
Climate differences from place to place largely determine
the types of ecosystems we see. How terrestrial
ecosystems appear to us is influenced mainly by the
dominant vegetation.
The word "biome" is used to describe a major vegetation
type such as tropical rain forest, grassland, tundra, etc.,
extending over a large geographic area (Figure). It is never
used for aquatic systems, such as ponds or coral reefs. It
always refers to a vegetation category that is dominant
over a very large geographic scale, and so is somewhat
broader than an ecosystem.
Figure: The distribution of biomes.

8. Types of ecosystem
1. Forest
2. Desert
3. Grassland
4. Freshwater
5. Marine water

9. Forest
Ecosystem
Forest
Ecosystem
Deciduous
Forest
Deciduous
Forest
Tropical rain
Forest
Tropical rain
Forest
Coastal
Forest
Coastal
Forest
Coniferous
Forest
Coniferous
Forest

10. Deciduous forest:
• Large, flat leaves that drop off in the fall, new leaves grow in spring.
• Leaves change color with the season.
• Trees grow at places with warm wet, summers and cold winters.
Tropical rain forest:
• These trees grow at places which are hot and wet whole year.
• Trees are very tall and leaves are always green.
• The forest has three layers – canopy, understory & forest floor.
Coastal forest:
• Grows in places where there is lots of rain.
• Temperature is neither too hot nor too cold.
• Have three layers just like rain forest – canopy, understory & forest
floor.
Coniferous forest:
• Grows in places with very cold winters and hot summers.
• The leaves look like needles, so they don’t need much water.
• Seeds grow in cones.

11. • Gets less rain than all the other forests.

12. Location
Hot deserts.
Cold deserts.
Plants
Don’t need
much water.
Have special
parts to beat
heat.
Animals
Have hard
shell to
protect
from water
loss.
Climate
Very dry &
warm.
Little rain per
year.
DESERT
Ecosystem

13. CLIMATE:
• The desert is very dry and warm.
• Rainfall is very less per year.
• Some deserts cross 100F of temperature.
LOCATION:
Hot desert:
• Temperature is very high all the year.
• Summers are very hot.
• Example: Arabian Peninsula, great sandy Victoria, Thar,
Sahara, etc.
Cold desert:
• Short and warm summers.
• Long and cold winters.
• Located in North Pole and South Pole.
• Example: takla makan, Atacama, gobi, great basin, Turkestan,
etc

14. ANIMALS:
• Protect them from the heat by staying under some shelter or shade.
• They survive by eating other animals or by eating plants that store
water in them.
• Some animals sleep during daytime and become active at night.
• Some animals have hard shells to protect them from loosing much
water especially by heat.
• More animals live in hot deserts than in cold deserts.
• Example: anteater, camel, roadrunner, scorpion, Gila monster
(lizard), etc.
Anteater Camel Roadrunner Gila monster
PLANTS:
• Many plants growing in deserts grow close to the ground for easy
access to water.
• They have special parts that help them in saving water.
• The special parts are: thick stems, shallow and wide roots and thick
skin covered with spines instead of leaves.
• Examples: cactus, babul, crucifixion bush, desert willow, Joshua
trees, etc.

15. Cactus Babul Crucifixion Willow Joshua
TROPICAL GRASSLAND:
• Found in areas with high average temperature, low to precipitation
and a prolonged dry season.
• They are widely spread on either side of the equator.
• Savanna is a great example of tropical grassland.
TEMPERATE GRASSLAND:
• Cover vast expanses of plains and gently rolling hills in the interior
of north and South America, Europe and Asia.
• Winters are bitterly cold, summers are hot and dry and annual
precipitation falls unevenly throughout the year.
POLAR GRASSLAND: (Tundra)
• A cold, treeless, usually lowland area of far northern region.
GRASSLAND
Tropical
Temperate
Polar
(Tundra)

16. • The lower strata of soil of tundra are permanently frozen, but in
summer the top layer of the soil thaws and can support low-growing
mosses, lichens, grasses and small shrubs.

17. MARINE
Shoreline
Barrier island
Coral reefs
Open ocean
TRANSITIONA
L
COMMUNITOE
S
Estuaries
Wet lands
FRESHWATE
R
Standing water
Moving water
AQUATIC
ECOSYSTE
M

18. Freshwater ecosystem
• Rivers, ponds, lakes and streams have fresh water.
• for some rivers. Important rivers, most often, originate from
lakes. Some rivers end in lakes.
• Since both rivers and lakes are freshwater and flow in and
out of each other, they share similar characteristics and
many species reside in both habitats.
• Usually 0.005% salt present with some exceptional ones
like great salt lakes – 5 to 27% of salt & dead sea with 30%
of salt.
• Moving water are cold and high in oxygen amount.
• Standing water are warmer and less in oxygen amount.

19. Transitional communities
Estuaries:
• Place where freshwater dumps into ocean.
• Brackish (less salty than sea water).
• Have rich sediments that often form deltas.
Wetlands:
• SWAMPS - have trees like bald cypress; high
productivity.
• MARSHES – have no trees and consist of only tall
grasses with high productivity.
• BOGS/FENS – it may or may not have trees. waterlogged
soils with lots of peat but have low productivity.

20. Marine ecosystem
Shorelines:
• Rocky coasts: it has great density and diversity attached to
the solid surface.
• Sandy beaches; this consists of burrowing animals.
• Threats: threats are caused to them due to hotels,
restaurants, houses near beaches and so plant life gets
destroyed, destabilizing of soil, susceptible to wind and
water erosion takes place.
Barrier Island:
• They are low and narrow offshore islands.
• It protects inland shores from shores.
• New coastal zoning law has been made to protect future
development.
Coral reefs:
• They are found in clear, warm shallow seas.
• It’s made up of accumulated calcareous skeletons of coral
animals.
• It has symbiotic relation with algae.
• Its formation depends on the amount of light penetration.

21. • They are dense and are in abundance.

22. ECOSYSTEM PROCESSES:
Energy and carbon enter ecosystems through photosynthesis, are
incorporated into living tissue, transferred to other organisms that
feed on the living and dead plant matter, and eventually released
through respiration. Most mineral nutrients, on the other hand, are
recycled within ecosystems.
Ecosystems are controlled both by external and internal factors.
External factors, also called state factors, control the overall
structure of an ecosystem and the way things work within it, but are
not themselves influenced by the ecosystem. The most important
of these is climate.

23. Climate determines the biome in which the ecosystem is
embedded.
Rainfall patterns and temperature seasonality determine the
amount of water available to the ecosystem and the supply of
energy available (by influencing photosynthesis).
Parent material, the underlying geological material that gives rise
to soils, determines the nature of the soils present, and influences
the supply of mineral nutrients.
Topography also controls ecosystem processes by affecting things
like microclimate, soil development and the movement of water
through a system. This may be the difference between the
ecosystem present in wetland situated in a small depression on the
landscape, and one present on an adjacent steep hillside.
Other external factors that play an important role in ecosystem
functioning include time and potential biota. Ecosystems are
dynamic entities—invariably, they are subject to periodic
disturbances and are in the process of recovering from some past
disturbance. Time plays a role in the development of soil from bare
rock and the recovery of a community from disturbance. Similarly,
the set of organisms that can potentially be present in an area can
also have a major impact on ecosystems. Ecosystems in similar
environments that are located in different parts of the world can
end up doing things very differently simply because they have
different pools of species present.
Unlike external factors, internal factors in ecosystems not only
control ecosystem processes, but are also controlled by them.
While the resource inputs are generally controlled by external
processes like climate and parent material, the availability of these
resources within the ecosystem is controlled by internal factors like
decomposition, root competition or shading. Other factors like

24. disturbance, succession or the types of species present are also
internal factors. Although humans exist and operate within
ecosystems, their cumulative effects are large enough to influence
external factors like climate.
Nutrient cycle:
Ecosystems continually exchange energy and carbon with the
wider environment; mineral nutrients, on the other hand, are mostly
cycled back and forth between plants, animals, microbes and the

25. soil. Most nitrogen enters ecosystems through biological nitrogen
fixation, is deposited through precipitation, dust, gases or is applied
as fertilizer. Since most terrestrial ecosystems are nitrogen-limited,
nitrogen cycling is an important control on ecosystem production.
Until modern times, nitrogen fixation was the major source of
nitrogen for ecosystems. Nitrogen fixing bacteria either live
symbiotically with plants, or live freely in the soil. The energetic
cost is high for plants which support nitrogen-fixing symbionts—as
much as 25% of GPP when measured in controlled conditions.
Many members of the legume plant family support nitrogen-fixing
symbionts. Some cyanobacteria are also capable of nitrogen
fixation. These arephototrophs, which carry out photosynthesis.
Like other nitrogen-fixing bacteria, they can either be free-living or
have symbiotic relationships with plants. Other sources of nitrogen
include acid deposition produced through the combustion of fossil
fuels, ammonia gas which evaporates from agricultural fields which
have had fertilizers applied to them, and dust. Anthropogenic
nitrogen inputs account for about 80% of all nitrogen fluxes in
ecosystems.
When plant tissues are shed or are eaten, the nitrogen in those
tissues becomes available to animals and microbes. Microbial
decomposition releases nitrogen compounds from dead organic
matter in the soil, where plants, fungi and bacteria compete for it.
Some soil bacteria use organic nitrogen-containing compounds as
a source of carbon, and release ammonium ions into the soil. This
process is known as nitrogen mineralization. Others convert
ammonium to nitrite and nitrate ions, a process known
as nitrification. Nitric oxide and nitrous oxide are also produced
during nitrification. Under nitrogen-rich and oxygen-poor

26. conditions, nitrates and nitrites are converted to nitrogen gas, a
process known as denitrification.
Other important nutrients
include phosphorus, sulfur, calcium, potassium, magnesium and m
anganese. Phosphorus enters ecosystems through weathering. As
ecosystems age this supply diminishes, making phosphorus-
limitation more common in older landscapes (especially in the
tropics). Calcium and sulfur are also produced by weathering, but
acid deposition is an important source of sulfur in many
ecosystems. Although magnesium and manganese are produced
by weathering, exchanges between soil organic matter and living
cells account for a significant portion of ecosystem fluxes.
Potassium is primarily cycled between living cells and soil organic
matter.

27. ROLE OF AN ECOSYSTEM
• Ecosystem services are ecologically mediated functional
processes essential to sustaining healthy human societies.
• Water provision and filtration, production
of biomass in forestry, agriculture, and fisheries, and removal
of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide (CO2) from the
atmosphere are examples of ecosystem services essential
to public health and economic opportunity.
• Nutrient cycling is a process fundamental to agricultural and
forest production.
• Ecosystem goods include the "tangible, material products" of
ecosystem processes—food, construction material, medicinal
plants—in addition to less tangible items like tourism and
recreation, and genes from wild plants and animals that can be
used to improve domestic species.
• Ecosystem services, on the other hand, are generally
"improvements in the condition or location of things of value".
These include things like the maintenance of hydrological cycles,
cleaning air and water, the maintenance of oxygen in the
atmosphere, crop pollination and even things like beauty,
inspiration and opportunities for research.
• While ecosystem goods have traditionally been recognized as
being the basis for things of economic value, ecosystem services
tend to be taken for granted.
• Gretchen Daily's original definition distinguished between
ecosystem goods and ecosystem services, Robert Costanza and
colleagues' later work and that of the Millennium Ecosystem
Assessment lumped all of these together as ecosystem services.

28. Function and biodiversity
Ecosystem processes are broad generalizations that actually take
place through the actions of individual organisms. The nature of the
organisms—the species, functional groups and trophic levels to
which they belong—dictates the sorts of actions these individuals
are capable of carrying out, and the relative efficiency with which
they do so. Thus, ecosystem processes are driven by the number
of species in an ecosystem, the exact nature of each individual
species, and the relative abundance organisms within these
species. Biodiversity plays an important role in ecosystem
functioning.
Ecological theory suggests that in order to coexist, species must
have some level of limiting similarity—they must be different from
one another in some fundamental way, otherwise one species
would competitively exclude the other. Despite this, the cumulative
effect of additional species in an ecosystem is not linear—
additional species may enhance nitrogen retention, for example,
but beyond some level of species richness, additional species may
have little additive effect. The addition (or loss) of species which
are ecologically similar to those already present in an ecosystem
tends to only have a small effect on ecosystem function.
Ecologically distinct species, on the other hand, have a much
larger effect. Similarly, dominant species have a large impact on
ecosystem function, while rare species tend to have a small
effect. Keystone species tend to have an effect on ecosystem
function that is disproportionate to their abundance in an
ecosystem.

29. Ecosystem management
When natural resource management is applied to whole
ecosystems, rather than single species, it is termed ecosystem
management.
A variety of definitions exist: F. Stuart Chapin and coauthors
define it as "the application of ecological science to resource
management to promote long-term sustainability of ecosystems
and the delivery of essential ecosystem goods and services", while
Norman Christensen and coauthors defined it as "management
driven by explicit goals, executed by policies, protocols, and
practices, and made adaptable by monitoring and research based
on our best understanding of the ecological interactions and
processes necessary to sustain ecosystem structure and function"
and Peter Brussard and colleagues defined it as "managing areas
at various scales in such a way that ecosystem services and
biological resources are preserved while appropriate human use
and options for livelihood are sustained".
Although definitions of ecosystem management abound, there is a
common set of principles which underlie these definitions.
A fundamental principle is the long-term sustainability of the
production of goods and services by the ecosystem;
"intergenerational sustainability [is] a precondition for
management, not an afterthought".
It also requires clear goals with respect to future trajectories and
behaviors of the system being managed.
Other important requirements include a sound ecological
understanding of the system, including connectedness, ecological
dynamics and the context in which the system is embedded.
Other important principles include an understanding of the role of
humans as components of the ecosystems and the use of adaptive
management.

30. While ecosystem management can be used as part of a plan
for wilderness conservation, it can also be used in intensively
managed ecosystems (for example, agro ecosystem and close to
nature forestry).

31. Threats to ecosystem
There are generally considered to be nine major threats to the
stability of ecosystems on Earth.
• Climate change and loss of biodiversity are often the most
publicized, although there are seven other factors that may
be equally threatening.
• The spread of agriculture and other human activities into
natural habitats poses a large threat to ecosystems.
• The disruption of fresh water systems through damming
and diversion by humans can lead to vast habitats
becoming dry and barren.
• Chemical pollution can have devastating effects of the
health of ecosystems (as well as humans) and the release
of aerosols into the atmosphere (through activities such as
burning fossil fuels) damages ecosystems in numerous
ways. The release of aerosols (among other things) can
also lead to the depletion of the ozone layer which
threatens to allow harmful solar radiation to cause damage
to organisms and ecosystems.
• Another potential threat to global ecosystems that is rarely
discussed is the acidification of the oceans due to
increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, which can
have serious knock-on effects on important aspects of
ocean chemistry.
• The disruption of the nitrogen cycle can lead to bacteria
converting too much nitrogen from the atmosphere into a
form not readily available for living things (this is often
encouraged by agriculture to give higher crop yields).

32. Of course, many of these threats are interlinked and if one
threat were to go unchecked and get out of control, others will
likely follow suit.
Climate change, disruption of the nitrogen cycle and the rate
of biodiversity loss were considered to pose the most
imminent threats to ecosystems on Earth, although others
were not far behind.

33. Ecosystem conservation
The main function of ecosystem conservation is protecting or
restoring the structure, function and species compilation within the
system. This can get hard quickly, because everything in an
ecosystem affects everything else.
• The best way to conserve an ecosystem is to approach it from
a large-scale view. Large-scale approaches avoid the pitfalls
of species-by-species methods that can drain finances and
resources fast. These methods also become one giant
headache because the conservationists become stuck in an
environmental loop, always trying to come up with something
new to fix the problem they just introduced.
• It is important for the conservationists to work with the local
people and governments so that there can be conservation
goals that work well within the ecological unit and with the
needs of the people.
• Whether an ecosystem will fail or not depends on the toxicity
of new factors, the resiliency of the ecosystem and its ability
to adapt. A toxic factor will ruin an ecosystem, but a resilient
ecosystem will be able to handle the change.
• For ecosystem conservation, it is important to note that they
function best when left alone. Results of too much human
intervention can be disastrous.
• The best approach to conservation is through goals that work
with the ecosystem and the human sides of things. This
ensures the preservation of wild ecosystems, as well as
allowing people to live freely within them.

34. Conclusion
Everyone in the world depends completely on Earth’s ecosystems and
the services they provide, such as food, water, disease management,
climate regulation, spiritual fulfillment, and aesthetic enjoyment. Over the
past 50 years, humans have changed these ecosystems more rapidly
and extensively than in any comparable period of time in human history,
largely to meet rapidly growing demands for food, fresh water, timber,
fiber, and fuel. This transformation of the planet has contributed to
substantial net gains in human well-being and economic development.
But not all regions and groups of people have benefited from this process
—in fact, many have been harmed. Moreover, the full costs associated
with these gains are only now becoming apparent. So it is better that care
for ecosystem should be taken as one of the major responsibility of every
individual for sustainable living of future generations as well.