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Grasslands

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There are two types of grasslands, tropical and temperate. Tropical grasslands are warm year around and have a dry and rainy season. Temperate grasslands have an average of 10 to 30 inches of rain per year, have shorter grass, and have a growing and dormant season (Grasslands Terrain of Many Names). There are the Great Plains in the United States that cover from parts of Texas, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Colorado, Wyoming and Montana and covers all of Kansas, Nebraska, South and North Dakota, and covers all the way up into parts of Canada. In Africa there is the African Savanna, which is a tropical grassland that covers 25 territories and South Africa. The abiotic structure of grasslands includes the climate; rainfall, temperature, wind flow, and ground moisture. The bedrock has an influence on the type of soil and what can and cannot be grown in that location, slopes and elevation, floods, fires, high temperatures and freezing temperatures are also abiotic structures. The biotic structures include any living thing in that ecosystem. Grass, rabbits, moles, elk, snakes, birds, bacteria and fungi are part of the biotic structures (tutorvista.com 2014). You cannot have one with out the other in an ecosystem. The grass needs the rain as well as the animals in order to survive. The temperatures help decide which type of animals and plant life will live in that area as well. Carbon function in the ecosystem is to be used by the plants for photosynthesis and to make organic molecules (Slideshare.net 2012). It is pulled from the atmosphere and used to become stored food. Animals eat the plants and then their digestive system breaks down the food to release energy and when breathing they release carbon dioxide out and continues the cycle. Nitrogen is in four phases, fixation, decay, nitrification and denitrification (slideshare.net 2012) and is also used by plants to grow. It has to be broke down to nitrates before living organisms are able to use it. Natural disturbance example would be a disease that spreads through a species and end up dying off. The predator and prey cycle would have to adapt with out that certain species around to be hunted and find a new prey or if the predator was the one to die off another predator would take over to help control the population of the prey. Human disturbance example would be pollution of any type and puts a strain on the ecosystem. The ecosystem has a natural recovery system and each time we pollute it is harder for that area to bounce back. Over the course of centuries the ecosystems have managed to build up a resistance and use every resource available to bring itself back to a productive state (nwf.org 2014).

Reference:

Carbon and Nitrogen Cycle, Sara Santos http://www.slideshare.net/saramssantos/carbon-and-nitrogen-cycle-14932178 Disturbance http://www.nwf.org/Wildlife/Wildlife-Conservation/Disturbance.aspx Ecosystem-Level Processes, Steve Archer and Fred E. Smeins http://cnrit.tamu.edu/rlem/textbook/Chapter5.htm Grasslands and Carbon: Processes and Trends, Rebecca McCulley http://www.fs.fed.us/ccrc/carboncourse/transcripts/4.McCulley.pdf Grasslands Terrain of Many Names http://environment.nationalgeographic.com/environment/habitats/grassland-profile/?rptregcta=reg_free_np&rptregcampaign=20131016_rw_membership_r1p_us_se_w# TutorVista.com Abiotic and Biotic Factors of the Grasslands
http://www.tutorvista.com/biology/abiotic-and-biotic-factors-of-the-grasslands

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