Biomass

A detailed Summary of Biomass

Many factors contribute to the diversity of life in an environment. The

availability of nutrients and sunlight, along with other factors that play a

pivotal role in determining what and how much life an area can sustain.

While studying the Second Law of Thermodynamics, it came to my attention

that the classical pyramid shape of the producer, C1, C2, C3, biomass pyramid

did little to take into account the amount of detrital input. I hypothesized

that the amount detrital input greatly effected the number of C1, C2, and C3

consumers and thus the overall biodiversity of an ecosystem. Further, if you

could find a test-bed where detrital input was the only real difference between

two similar ecosystems you would find that organisms of each ecosystem

would be adapted to the peculiar conditions. This adaptation would lead you

to find vast differences in the taxonomic groups associated with each

With this in mind, I first set out to find two similar ecosystems were I

could test this hypothesis. Second, to sample, categorize and compare the

diversity of these ecosystems along taxonomic lines. Next, I planned to use

several of the widely accepted diversity indexes (Simpson’s Index, Shannon&#

exception. This was also the case with each of my peers that performed this

n=Number of individuals of a species. (Cox)

observations were made on terrain, topography, climate, vegetation and

Shannon’s Index in determined by the equation:

of overhanging branches. This gallery consisted of (pine, oak, sweetgum trees)

This shows a significantly greater level of diversity for Bernaldo creek than for

than the diversity of Alazan creek.

Approximate Word count = 1653
Approximate Pages = 7 (250 words per page double spaced)

Category: Science

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