IDU SCIENCE

1. IDU SCIENCE Group 3 Tibo, Na Young, Vanesha, Audrey

2. Ecosystem • An ecosystem is a community of all organisms in a given area, and the physical environment which they interact with. • On the land there are terrestrial ecosystems such as forests, grasslands or rainforests; and in the water there are freshwater and marine ecosystems such as lakes and, say, coral reef. • By the way coral reef is the second species-richest ecosystem on the Earth). • Rainforest biome is very complex. It includes a myriad of different species of plants and animals that are all adapted to rain, and lots of it.

3. Energy Transfer • The main source of all living things is the sun. In other words, every source of energy come from the sun. And the sun is also related with food chain. If a bird eats a snake and the snake ate a rabbit and the rabbit ate a carrot and the carrot got energy from the sun.

4. Energy Transfer

5. Food chain in Australia Tertiary Consumer Secondary Consumer Primary Consumer Producer Nutrients Decomposer

6. Food Chain • Australia is a tropical rainforest country. So there are four levels in tropical rainforest food chain. 1. Plants, flowers, fruits, leaves, plankton, insects, larvae, and spiders. 2. Plant, insect and plankton eaters: frogs, fish, bandicoots, possums, echidnas, most birds, wallabies and kangaroos 3. Small animal eaters: snakes, quolls, dunnarts, platypus, kookaburras, owls, birds of prey 4. Larger animal eaters: pythons, crocodiles, dingoes, feral cats, feral dogs

7. Food Web in Australia • A food web depicts feeding connections (what eats what) in an ecological community. Ecologists can broadly lump all life forms into one of two categories called trophic levels: 1) the autotrophs, and 2) the heterotrophs. • Rainforest ecosystem, just like other ecosystems, has a trophic structure. Species in an ecosystem can be divided into different trophic levels depending on their main source of food.

8. Food web

9. Carbon Cycle • The Carbon Cycle is a complex series of processes through which all of the carbon atoms in existence rotate. The same carbon atoms in your body today have been used in countless other molecules since time began.

10. Carbon Cycle in Australia • The Southern Ocean is one the most significant regions on earth for regulating the build up of anthropogenic CO2 in the atmosphere, and the capacity for carbon uptake in the region could be altered by climate change. The project aims to establish a time series of anthropogenic carbon accumulation. The work will be used to identify processes regulating the CO2 uptake and to test models that predict future uptake.

11. Carbon Cycle Diagram

12. Nitrogen Cycle • The process called nitrogen cycle is when nitrogen is converted to other forms of the element. There are two ways that this process is carried out and it’s either a biological process or a non-biological process. The important processes for the nitrogen cycle include nitrification, fixation, denitrification and mineralization. 78% of the Earth’s atmosphere is composed of nitrogen which is why it’s the largest sources of nitrogen but this atmospheric nitrogen is not available for biological use which leads to the scarcity of the nitrogen that is usable for the ecosystem.

13. Nitrogen Cycle Diagram

14. Bibliography • Barrow, Mandy. "Habitats and Food Chains." Woodlands Junior School, Tonbridge, Kent UK. Web. 13 Mar. 2012. <http://www.woodlands-junior.kent.sch.uk/Homework/habitats.html>. • "Predators." , Bugs, Museum Victoria, Australia. Web. 13 Mar. 2012. <http://museumvictoria.com.au/bugs/foodchains/predation.aspx> • "FOODmap: An Analysis of the Australian Food Supply Chain." - Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry. 2 Jan. 2012. Web. 13 Mar. 2012. <http://www.daff.gov.au/agriculture-food/food/publications/foodmap-a-comparative-analysis>.