BCLN Science 7 - Rev. Sept/2015
Unit 2 ~ Learning Guide Name: ______________________________
Instructions:
Using a pencil, complete the following notes as you work through the related lessons. Show ALL
work as is explained in the lessons. You are required to have this package completed BEFORE you
write your unit test. Do your best and ask questions if you don’t understand anything!
Food for All Questions
1. What is an organisms' niche and why is it important in its environment?
2. Label the photosynthesis diagram of the plant.
BCLN Science 7 - Rev. Sept/2015
3. How do each of these organisms obtain their food? Complete the table and provide
examples for each organism.
Organism
How they obtain food
Examples
Producers
Consumers
Detrivores
Decomposers
Food Chains and Food Webs Questions
1. What is the difference between a food chain and a food web?
Energy Flows Questions
1. How is energy transferred down the food chain?
2. Draw and label an example of a food chain that starts with the sun and ends with you.
Remember to include the arrows to show the direction of energy consumption.
Sun
BCLN Science 7 - Rev. Sept/2015
3. Using the food chain model you created, describe what might happen to the other organisms
if you removed any one of the organisms.
4. A model is a good way to explain a scientific concept. But like any model your model had
limitations. What limitations did your model food web have?
5. What type of living organism does every food chain begin with? Why?
6. What is an ecological pyramid?
7. Why are there always fewer organisms at the top of an ecological pyramid?
Decomposition Questions
1. Why is decomposition important?
2. What is composting?
BCLN Science 7 - Rev. Sept/2015
3.
Describe how decomposers link the living and non-living parts of an ecosystem.
Water and Carbon Cycles Questions
1. Why do we call it the water cycle?
2. Label the water cycle diagram and explain what each part does.
Part of water cycle.
Condensation
Evaporation
Precipitation
What it does.
BCLN Science 7 - Rev. Sept/2015
3. What is carbon?
4. How does photosynthesis relate to the carbon cycle?
5. What are the two parts to the carbon cycle?
6.
Draw a labelled diagram of the Carbon Cycle in the space below. Include these parts:
Carbon dioxide in the atmosphere; 1) plants and 2) animals producing carbon dioxide;
3) fossil fuels forming underground; 4) human activities such as burning producing carbon
dioxide; 5) photosynthesis in plants using carbon dioxide; 6) decomposition returning
carbon to the soil
BCLN Science 7 - Rev. Sept/2015
Answer Key
Food for All Answers:
1. An organisms' niche is what it eats and what eats it. This relationship affects all of the other
organisms in its environment.
2.
Sunlight
Carbon Dioxide
Oxygen
Water
3.
Organism
How they obtain food
Examples
Producers
Produce their own food
Plants, trees, cactus
Consumers
Eat other organisms
Animals, birds, fish, insects
Detrivores
Eat decaying organisms
Vultures, worms
Decomposers
Clean up bits of organic waste
Fungi, bacteria
Food Chains and Food Webs Answers:
1. A food chain models how food energy passes from one organism to another. A food
web shows a number of food chains all at once and how they interrelate.
Energy Flows Answers:
1. Energy is transferred down the food chain when one organism eats another.
2. A possible example of a food chain with arrows showing the direction the energy travels.
Plant
Rabbit
Coyote
BCLN Science 7 - Rev. Sept/2015
3. If one of the living organisms were removed from the food chain the population to the right
of the removed organism would decrease, the population to the left of the removed organism
would increase.
4. The limitations the model for the food web might have are other consumers at the different
levels that would affect the populations at each level, other factors like humans interacting
with the environment.
5. Food chains begin with plants or producers because they produce their own food and do not
rely on other organisms. Consumers need producers to survive.
6. An ecological pyramid is a model to show the energy loss in a food chain.
7. There are always fewer organisms at the top of an ecological pyramid because those
organisms need to consume more of the organisms below them on the pyramid.
Decomposition Answers:
1. Decomposition is important because if it did not happen there would be a buildup of organic
matter everywhere.
2. Composting is when the perfect environment is created for Detrivores and Decomposers to
break down organic matter and produce nutrients. Example: the rich soil from a compost is
used on gardens.
3. Some Detrivores/decomposers consume non-living organic matter for food like dead plants.
This creates rich soil for the producers.
Water and Carbon Cycles Answers:
1.
2.
It is called a water cycle because the water continually recycles itself. Precipitation
becomes a part of the ground water, lakes, and streams and is evaporated back up into the
clouds to become precipitation again.
BCLN Science 7 - Rev. Sept/2015
Part of water cycle.
Condensation
Evaporation
Precipitation
What it does.
is when the tiny drops of water in clouds combine and fall in
the form of rain or snow. The water seeps through the
ground back into the lakes and oceans.
is the process where liquid changes into water vapor
which is an invisible gas. Water is always evaporating
from lakes and oceans, but also from the leaves of
plants.
is when the water vapour in the air changes back into
liquid in the form of clouds.
3. Carbon is also a material that changes forms in familiar cycles. Carbon comes in many forms
including coal, oil, natural gas and carbon dioxide. All living things contain carbon.
4. Decaying animals provides carbon dioxide for photosynthesis.
5. The two parts to the carbon cycle are the non-human influenced carbon cycle (animals
decomposing and supplying carbon dioxide for photosynthesis) and the human influenced
carbon cycle (animal remains form fossil fuels which we burn in cars and homes and factories).
6. The carbon cycle