BIOL 346 Ecological Perspectives
Dr. George Davis
Unit One Content Outline
Climate Change, Ecology and Biodiversity
With references to sections of Environmental Science by Miller and Spoolman
Earth’s Climate: What Normally Determines It? (15.4-15.6)
I. Earth Characteristics
A. Location from sun
B. Orbit shape
C. Tilt
D. Milankovitch Cycles
E. Earth’s natural greenhouse effect (page 41 figure 3.3 + pages 126-127)
II. Seasons
A. The cause of the seasons: tilt of the Earth to the plane of orbit (23.5 degrees)
B. Progress of the earth’s seasons
C. Changes in the amount of sunlight
D. Climate zones
III. Human Impacts that Seem to Affect Climate
A. The role on greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere
B. The change in the concentration (in parts per million: ppm) of carbon dioxide over
time.
C. The impact on this change in carbon dioxide on earth’s weather.
D. Human’s impact on the concentration of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide.
IV. Earth’s surface
A. Land/water percentage
B. Ice Sheets land and water
C. Ocean Currents (page 124)
Biomes and Ecosystems
I. Biomes (land only) ( Section 7.1)
A. Tropical Savanna
B. Tropical rainforest
C. Temperate grassland
D. Temperate deciduous forest
E. Boreal Coniferous forests
F. Desert
G. The three main biomes in North America
H. The three main biomes in Minnesota
I. What long term physical conditions affect the location of the earth’s biomes?
(section 7.2))
II. Ecosystem function (chapter 3)
A. Niches and habitats (section 4.6)
B. Trophic levels in a community
C. Energy flow through an ecosystem
D. Food webs/niches and habitat (using a tallgrass prairie community as an example)
E. Ecological pyramids: energy transfer through trophic levels
F. What is the mechanism that allows Life on earth to respond to changing
conditions? (pages 63-70)
F. Materials cycle in an ecosystem
1. The carbon cycle
2. The Hydrologic (water) Cycle
G. Succession (ecosystems response to changing environmental conditions)
(section5.3)
Biodiversity
Read Chapters 4 and 5
I. What is biodiversity?
II. Why is biodiversity within a species important to the species?
A. Range (geography)
B. Survival over time of the species.
C. Examples of characteristics of more diverse species.
III. Why is biodiversity among species in a biome (or ecosystem) important to the
survival of the biome (or ecosystem?)
IV. Extinctions
V. Human impacts on biodiversity
A. Examples
B. Why we should care