Chapter 29

Chapter 29 - How Do Ecosystems Work?

Nutrients - This site allows you to link to a separate document for each nutrient. Each document tells you how much of each nutrient is found in hundreds of different foods. Documents are in .pdf format, so you must have Adobe Acrobat or Adobe Acrobat Reader. If you need to download this application, go to Adobe's Web site.

The Ecological Society of America Issues in Ecology - This site has two resources that should be useful for Chapter 29. The first downloadable report is "Human Alteration of the Global Nitrogen Cycle: Cause and Consequences," which relates to the nitrogen biogeochemical cycle, and the second is "Ecosystem Services: Benefits Supplied to Human Societies by Natural Ecosystems," which evaluates the economic benefits supplied by properly functioning ecosystems.

The Hydrologic Cycle: On Line Meteorology Guide - This excellent site takes you to an introduction to the hydrologic cycle. It begins with a well-illustrated module containing eight sections and a summary, which contains an animated color illustration. Each section contains a discussion with numerous embedded terms that present more detail. This site was developed by the Department of Atmospheric Sciences (DAS) at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC), as WW2010 (the weather world 2010 project), which contains numerous other weather-related modules.

U.S. EPA Acid Rain Program - A very good starting point for an investigation into acid precipitation, this site provides a basic discussion that you can access by way of the "Students and Teachers" button on the left side of the page. A more thorough, but still very understandable, treatment of the problem is available through the six sections listed in the body of the Web page; additional resources are also only a click away. For a look at the problem in the United States, choose "Environmental Effects," scroll to the bottom, and choose "pH Map of Rainfall in the United States (1996)."

U.S. EPA Global Warming - This site may not be quite as thorough as the EPA acid rain site (there is only one track of information), but it is still pretty good. On the initial page are several choices that will lead to details. The basic discussion is available through three topics, each of which leads further. More details, as well as links to other sites and news items, can be accessed from buttons on the left side of the page.

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This page was last updated on: February 12, 2006