CH 3 key terms

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Across
  1. 1. cycle / Cycle that collects, purifies, and distributes Earth’s fixed supply of water.
  2. 4. / Layer of the atmosphere between the troposphere and the more distant mesosphere, thermosphere, and exosphere; contains the ozone layer.
  3. 6. / Lowest layer of the atmosphere and the only layer suitable for terrestrial life. Weather occurs in this layer.
  4. 8. cycle / Cyclic movement of carbon in different chemical forms from the environment to organisms and then back to the environment.
  5. 14. respiration / Form of cellular respiration in which some decomposers get the energy they need through the breakdown of glucose (or other nutrients) in the absence of oxygen.
  6. 15. / Porous, water-saturated layers of sand, gravel, or bedrock in which groundwater collects.
  7. 17. chain / Sequence of organisms in which each organism is a source of nutrients or energy for the next level of organisms.
  8. 19. / All of the gaseous, liquid, and solid water on or near Earth’s surface.
  9. 23. consumer / Consumer that feeds on both primary and secondary consumers
  10. 25. respiration / Complex process that uses oxygen and glucose to produce energy and occurs in the cells of most living organisms. Carbon dioxide and water are the byproducts of this reaction.
  11. 26. primary productivity (GPP) / Rate at which an ecosystem’s producers convert radiant energy into chemical energy.
  12. 27. / Animal that can use both plants and other animals as food sources.
  13. 28. level / Designation for an organism based on its methods of making or finding food and feeding behavior.
  14. 31. / Zone of Earth where life is found. It consists of parts of the atmosphere (the troposphere), hydrosphere (mostly surface water and groundwater), and lithosphere (mostly soil and surface rocks and sediments on the bottoms of oceans and other bodies of water).
  15. 32. cycle / Continual movement of the elements and compounds that make up nutrients through air, water, soil, rock, and living organisms within ecosystems. The process is driven by energy from the sun and by Earth’s gravity.
  16. 33. / Period of relatively stable climate and other environmental conditions; it has allowed the human population to grow, develop agriculture, and take over a large and growing share of Earth’s land and other resources.
  17. 34. / Consumers that get their nutrients by breaking down nonliving organic matter such as leaf litter, fallen trees, and dead animals. In the process of obtaining their own food, these organisms release nutrients from their waste that return nutrients to the soil and water.
  18. 35. / Organism such as a plant that makes the food it needs from compounds in soil, carbon dioxide, air, and water by using the energy of sunlight.
Down
  1. 2. / Consumer organism that feeds on detritus— freshly dead organisms.
  2. 3. cycle / Cyclic movement of nitrogen in different chemical forms from the environment to organisms and then back to the environment.
  3. 5. consumer / Animal that feeds on primary consumers
  4. 7. New epoch in which humans have become major agents of change in the functioning of Earth’s life-support system as their ecological footprints have spread over Earth.
  5. 9. / Organism that eats mostly green plants or algae.
  6. 10. / Precipitation that seeps into the soil and collects in an aquifer
  7. 11. / Earth’s core, mantle, and crust—all the material above and below the surface of Earth that forms the planet’s mass
  8. 12. effect / Process in which solar energy warms the troposphere as it reflects from Earth’s surface (geosphere) and interacts with carbon dioxide, methane, water vapor (from the hydrosphere and biosphere), and other greenhouse gases (atmosphere). This warms Earth and supports life.
  9. 13. runoff / Precipitation that falls on land and flows over land surfaces into streams, rivers, lakes, wetlands, and the ocean, where it can evaporate and repeat the hydrologic cycle.
  10. 16. web / Complex network of interconnected food chains.
  11. 18. primary productivity (NPP) / Rate at which producers use photosynthesis to produce and store chemical energy minus the rate at which they use some of this stored chemical energy through cellular respiration. It is used to measure the rate at which producers make chemical energy potentially available to the consumers in an ecosystem.
  12. 20. cycle / Cyclic movement of phosphorus through water, Earth’s crust, and living organisms.
  13. 21. / Envelope of gases surrounding Earth
  14. 22. / Animal that feeds mostly on other animals.
  15. 24. consumer / Organism that eats mostly green plants or algae.
  16. 29. / Organism that cannot produce its own food and gets its organic nutrients by feeding on the tissues of producers or of other consumers;
  17. 30. / Process in which producers change radiant energy (sunlight) into chemical energy. Harnessing the energy of light allows producers to convert inorganic molecules of carbon dioxide and water into organic molecules such as glucose.