Why is the aquatic biome important

However, the continued heavy exploitation of certain biomes, such as the forest and aquatic, may have more severe implications. Forests are important as they are home to the most diverse biotic communties in the world. Hidden within these biomes are potential medicines and many thousands of unseen and undiscovered species.

Also, forests have a global climate-buffering capacity, so their destruction may cause large-scale changes in global climate. Logging has depleted many old-growth temperate forests. The increased demand for homes, paper, and other wood products have not allowed for much conservation.

More recently, people have begun to realize that logging has cleared much of these forests. Wiser use of the forests and efforts to replant trees have helped to slow down the depletion of these communities. Tropical forests have fallen victim to timber exploitation, slash and burn farming, and clearfelling for industrial use or cattle ranching, particularly in Latin America. Our increasing demand for meat products has spurred these events.

Like ponds and lakes, life in the ocean is adapted to certain regions of the water. For example, the deepest parts of the ocean are too dark to support photosynthesis , but many creatures still manage to survive here. In these regions, the food chain is based on bacteria that perform chemical reactions to obtain energy, also called chemosynthesis. In shallow ocean waters, coral reefs can form.

These structures look like shelves of rock, but they are actually made of living animals, called corals, with a calcium carbonate skeleton. Coral reefs are incredibly diverse, hosting over a thousand species of fish. Currently, coral reefs are in danger due to human-caused climate change , which has led to the ocean growing hotter and more acidic. Estuaries are regions where freshwater and ocean water mix.

Life in estuaries must be adapted to this mixture of saltwater and freshwater. Estuaries are home to many species of fish and shellfish, as well as several species of migratory birds that depend on estuaries for a place to nest and raise their young.

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Text on this page is printable and can be used according to our Terms of Service. Any interactives on this page can only be played while you are visiting our website. These chemosynthetic bacteria use the hydrogen sulfide as an energy source and serve as the base of the food chain found around the vents. In which of the following regions would you expect to find photosynthetic organisms? Coral reefs are ocean ridges formed by marine invertebrates living in warm shallow waters within the photic zone of the ocean.

The Great Barrier Reef is a well-known reef system located several miles off the northeastern coast of Australia. Other coral reefs are fringing islands, which are directly adjacent to land, or atolls, which are circular reefs surrounding a former island that is now underwater.

The coral-forming colonies of organisms members of phylum Cnidaria secrete a calcium carbonate skeleton. These calcium-rich skeletons slowly accumulate, thus forming the underwater reef [Figure 3]. Corals found in shallower waters at a depth of approximately 60 m or about ft have a mutualistic relationship with photosynthetic unicellular protists. The relationship provides corals with the majority of the nutrition and the energy they require. The waters in which these corals live are nutritionally poor and, without this mutualism, it would not be possible for large corals to grow because there are few planktonic organisms for them to feed on.

Some corals living in deeper and colder water do not have a mutualistic relationship with protists; these corals must obtain their energy exclusively by feeding on plankton using stinging cells on their tentacles. Global Decline of Coral Reefs It takes a long time to build a coral reef. The animals that create coral reefs do so over thousands of years, continuing to slowly deposit the calcium carbonate that forms their characteristic ocean homes.

Bathed in warm tropical waters, the coral animals and their symbiotic protist partners evolved to survive at the upper limit of ocean water temperature. The main cause of killing of coral reefs is warmer-than-usual surface water. As global warming raises ocean temperatures, coral reefs are suffering.

The excessive warmth causes the coral organisms to expel their endosymbiotic, food-producing protists, resulting in a phenomenon known as bleaching. Rising levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide further threaten the corals in other ways; as carbon dioxide dissolves in ocean waters, it lowers pH, thus increasing ocean acidity.

As acidity increases, it interferes with the calcification that normally occurs as coral animals build their calcium carbonate homes. When a coral reef begins to die, species diversity plummets as animals lose food and shelter.

Coral reefs are also economically important tourist destinations, so the decline of coral reefs poses a serious threat to coastal economies. Human population growth has damaged corals in other ways, too. As human coastal populations increase, the runoff of sediment and agricultural chemicals has increased, causing some of the once-clear tropical waters to become cloudy.

At the same time, overfishing of popular fish species has allowed the predator species that eat corals to go unchecked. When change occurs rapidly, species can become extinct before evolution leads to newly adapted species. Estuaries are biomes that occur where a river, a source of fresh water, meets the ocean. Therefore, both fresh water and salt water are found in the same vicinity; mixing results in a diluted brackish salt water.

Estuaries form protected areas where many of the offspring of crustaceans, mollusks, and fish begin their lives. Salinity is an important factor that influences the organisms and the adaptations of the organisms found in estuaries. The salinity of estuaries varies and is based on the rate of flow of its freshwater sources. Once or twice a day, high tides bring salt water into the estuary. Low tides occurring at the same frequency reverse the current of salt water [Figure 4].

The daily mixing of fresh water and salt water is a physiological challenge for the plants and animals that inhabit estuaries. Many estuarine plant species are halophytes, plants that can tolerate salty conditions. Halophytic plants are adapted to deal with salt water spray and salt water on their roots. In some halophytes, filters in the roots remove the salt from the water that the plant absorbs. Animals, such as mussels and clams phylum Mollusca , have developed behavioral adaptations that expend a lot of energy to function in this rapidly changing environment.

When these animals are exposed to low salinity, they stop feeding, close their shells, and switch from aerobic respiration in which they use gills to anaerobic respiration a process that does not require oxygen. When high tide returns to the estuary, the salinity and oxygen content of the water increases, and these animals open their shells, begin feeding, and return to aerobic respiration. Freshwater biomes include lakes, ponds, and wetlands standing water as well as rivers and streams flowing water.

Humans rely on freshwater biomes to provide aquatic resources for drinking water, crop irrigation, sanitation, recreation, and industry. These various roles and human benefits are referred to as ecosystem services.

Lakes and ponds are found in terrestrial landscapes and are therefore connected with abiotic and biotic factors influencing these terrestrial biomes. Lakes and ponds can range in area from a few square meters to thousands of square kilometers. Temperature is an important abiotic factor affecting living things found in lakes and ponds.

During the summer in temperate regions, thermal stratification of deep lakes occurs when the upper layer of water is warmed by the Sun and does not mix with deeper, cooler water. The process produces a sharp transition between the warm water above and cold water beneath. The two layers do not mix until cooling temperatures and winds break down the stratification and the water in the lake mixes from top to bottom. During the period of stratification, most of the productivity occurs in the warm, well-illuminated, upper layer, while dead organisms slowly rain down into the cold, dark layer below where decomposing bacteria and cold-adapted species such as lake trout exist.

Like the ocean, lakes and ponds have a photic layer in which photosynthesis can occur. Phytoplankton algae and cyanobacteria are found here and provide the base of the food web of lakes and ponds. Zooplankton, such as rotifers and small crustaceans, consume these phytoplankton. At the bottom of lakes and ponds, bacteria in the aphotic zone break down dead organisms that sink to the bottom.

Nitrogen and particularly phosphorus are important limiting nutrients in lakes and ponds. Therefore, they are determining factors in the amount of phytoplankton growth in lakes and ponds.

When there is a large input of nitrogen and phosphorus e. Algal blooms [Figure 5] can become so extensive that they reduce light penetration in water. As a result, the lake or pond becomes aphotic and photosynthetic plants cannot survive.

When the algae die and decompose, severe oxygen depletion of the water occurs. Fishes and other organisms that require oxygen are then more likely to die. Rivers and the narrower streams that feed into the rivers are continuously moving bodies of water that carry water from the source or headwater to the mouth at a lake or ocean.

Abiotic features of rivers and streams vary along the length of the river or stream. Streams begin at a point of origin referred to as source water. The source water is usually cold, low in nutrients, and clear. The channel the width of the river or stream is narrower here than at any other place along the length of the river or stream.