Ecology - the Rocky shore and the Inland

A detailed Summary of Ecology - the Rocky shore and the Inland

The environment in a habitat is affected by many factors. These are physical factors, nonliving ones, and biotic factors, living ones. These factors vary completely in different areas. In this essay the two places I'll be taking are the rocky shore and the inland. Though they are not far away from each other, their ecosystems differ in many ways; I'll try to explain why and why some habitats are more suitable for organisms than others.

I'll start first with the physical factors. These include air temperature, wind speed, humidity and most important the soil. These are very important because they determine which animals are going to live in the habitat and their way of living.

Air temperature affects as much in the inland as in the rocky shore. This, of course, was measured using a thermometer. We put the thermometer at ground level and wrote down the temperature. For this experiment the rocky shore had a higher temperature of 34 degrees Celsius, though the difference was 4 degrees. The reason for this mere change is actually due to a biotic factor, which is that plants stopped the total exposure of the soil to the sun. The air temperature affects the evaporation rate in the inland, which affects the plants. In the rocky shor

e some organisms have to adapt themselves to the heat, most of them try to prevent dehydration and not many do this.

The habitats differ a lot in terms of structure; by this I mean the amount of silt, clay, sand and gravel. This experiment is done by taking the soil from both habitats and putting it in a cylinder with water. This will give you (after a week) different layers of soil. The rocky shore had 15% clay; the inland had 10%. The rocky shore had 25% silt; the inland had 20%. The rocky shore had 60% sand; the inland had 30%. The rocky shore had 0% gravel; the inland had 40%. As you can see most of the soil in the rocky shore is sand. This makes the soil frail.

For measuring the wind speed a special apparatus was used, though it is not very accurate (due to the fact that wind speed changes from one second to another), you can measure the range of the wind speed. There is a really big in wind speed between the inland and the rocky shore. The wind in the rocky shore has a speed of 6 to 7 mph, whereas in the inland the wind speed is zero mph. The reason for this is that a lot of plants block the wind; the rocky shore hasn't got a lot of plant. One of the most destructive consequences of a lot of wind is soil erosion. The wind blows away all the fertile soil; therefore there can't be any plants, which many organisms need. A place where there is no wind is much calmer and a preferred place by many organisms. In a habitat with such wind speed as the rocky shore, many organisms (especially insects which haven't adapted themselves to this) are blown away, so it's an unlikely habitat for them.

To the ecosystem, plant life is really important and the soil is very important to the plant life. So soil is very important in the ecosystem. To study the soil, I used a number of exper

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Approximate Word count = 1209
Approximate Pages = 5 (250 words per page double spaced)

Category: Science