Ecology Introduction
This week we are learning about how animals and plants interact with each other and survive in their environment. This part of biology is known as population ecology.
The study of ecology includes:
Types of migrations, genetic exchange, and forms of symbiosis population distribution patterns, food chains, population growth pattern, why we need pollinators, and how species spread.
An ecosystem involves all living and non-living components in an area, how energy flows and matter cycles through an environment.
Ecology VOcabulary
Atmosphere: this includes the wind speed and direction, humidity, light intensity and quality, precipitation and temperature.​
Biotic Factors: These are all the living organisms in the environment, including their interactions.
Abiotic factors: elements that are not alive: soil, rocks, mountains, rain, clouds
Soil:
Water:
Living organisms interact with each other in their habitat, they influence matter by walking around and moving things around.
Habitat: the natural environment in which a creature lives including the biotic and abiotic factors.
Each organism occupies a niche, an ecological niche of an organism is their function in the ecosystem: where they live, what organisms they interact with, how they respond t changes in the health of the environment.
Tolerance rage: each species has a tolerance range, this is their comfort zone, at what point they move to another environment.
What is pH and why does it matter?
The term pH refers to the acidity or alkalinity of a solution, it stands for potential hydrogen.
Substance that release hydrogen ions when dissolved in water are acids. The more hydrogen ions they release the more acidic they are. Substances that release hydroxide ions when dissolved in water are bases. Alkalinity increases with the concentration of hydroxyl ions. Each pH unit represents a 10-fold change in concentration. 
Contaminants CONTRIBUTE to Acid Rain
Acid rain: rainfall made sufficiently acidic by atmospheric pollution that it causes environmental harm, typically to forests and lakes. The main cause is the industrial burning of coal and other fossil fuels, the waste gases from which contain sulfur and nitrogen oxides, which combine with atmospheric water to form acids. -Oxford
Normal, clean rain has a pH value of between 5.0 and 5.5, which is slightly acidic. When rain combines with sulfur dioxide or nitrogen oxides produced from power plants and automobiles the rain becomes much more acidic. Typical acid rain has a pH value of 4.0.
ph and Environmentalism
Acids
Acids are substance that break apart in water to form a hydrogen ion.
Everyday Acids
Acids react with carbonates to give off carbon dioxide
Bases
Bases
Everyday examples:
Interesting ph facts
​Some plants tell us the pH of their soil by expressing different colors of flowers.
Venom is Acidic
A sting from a bee may be painful for many reasons, pH of bee venom is 5.0-5.5
Formic acid in ants has a pH of 2 to 3
The pH of a river is not the same as the pH of the rain
When it rains or we use water for irrigation, water goes downhill, down the gradient of the earth
There is a connection between the water that moves across land and the pH of bodies of water such as lakes, rives, ponds, and the sea​
Water moves through a watershed, the way the surface water drains down from ridges to basins.
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