Introduction

Ecology is the study of relationships between living things and between living things and
their environment where all organisms must interact for both living and non-living things that
surrounds them. Living things is also known as biotic while non-living things is abiotic such as
soils, water, and meteorological factors.
If we still remember the Lifes hierarchy of Organization, such as the biosphere,
ecosystem level, community level, population level, organism level, organ system level, organ
level, tissue level, cellular level, organelle level, and the molecular and atom level. These are
the levels of organization that defines life using a reductionist approach.
Our environment is classified in two things, the living things and non-living things other
called it as man-made that surrounds an organism. In ecology, you must always think that all
organisms are interdependent which means they depend to each other. Like the old saying give
and take. Organism is like a human, they also need food, water, and shelter for them to survive.
In the field of ecology, it addresses interactions of plants and animals including their
behavior in eating, selection of nesting or location sites, and you cannot avoid or control the
competition of species. In studying ecology, we need to focus from basic concept of ecology
which is the population, ecosystem, community, and biome.

Body
From a science dictionary, organism is an individual living thing, such as a plant,
animal, bacterium, protest, or fungus. The body of organism is made up of smaller parts that
work together. There are many different organisms. Some scientist estimated, there are 100,000
different organisms on Earth.
Population is a group of individuals of the same species which can freely interbreed
where they are found together in a particular place. A key feature of populations is that, they are
more likely to interact with other members of the same population compared to the other
members of a different population of the same species especially when they are living in
different place.

Based from the definition of population, we can give an example. Imagine a forest that
planted a lot of pine trees. All of these pine trees represent the population of pine trees in the
forest.
Different populations may live in the same specific area. Example they planted many
flowering plants together with the insects, microbial populations, and the pine trees in the forest.
This can be called as community because if put together the different population in a particular
place they must be classified as community. The main focus of community is the study of biotic
interactions.
Ecosystem defined as a natural unit consisting of all plants, animals and microorganisms (biotic factors) in an area functioning together with all of the non-living physical
(abiotic) factors of the environment. The three major classes of ecosystems are freshwater
ecosystems, terrestrial ecosystems and the ocean ecosystems.
First is freshwater ecosystem supports many species of life which includes fish,
amphibians, insects and plants The worlds freshwater is about to three percent (3%) only;
ninety-nine percent (99%) of it is, frozen in glaciers and pack ice or buried in aquifers. The said
aquifers are the saturated zone beneath the water table and huge storehouses of water. The
other freshwaters are found in lakes, ponds, rivers, and streams. The biggest lake of the
Philippines is Laguna de Bay.
One example of freshwater is lake. Lake has three distinct zones, each with its
characteristic community of organisms. First is littoral zone, the zone close to shore. The light
reaches all the way to the bottom. The producers are plants, that are rooted at the bottom and
algae attached to the plants or any other solid substrate and the consumers are the
tiny crustaceans, flatworms, insect larvae, snails, frogs, fish, and turtles. Second is limnetic
zone, the layer of open water where photosynthesis can occur. If you go deeper and deeper, the
amount of light decreases until a depth is reached where the rate of photosynthesis becomes
equal to the rate of respiration. If this happened, the net primary production will no longer occur.
Third is Profundal zone, the water become stagnant.
Second is, terrestrial ecosystem implies the interaction between living organisms and
non-living objects occurring in the land masses of continents. According to research, 28 percent
of the Earths surface are belongs to terrestrial ecosystems. Examples of terrestrial ecosystem
is taigas and tundras.

Taigas are cold-climate forests found in the northern latitudes. This is the world's largest
terrestrial ecosystem and they accounted it for about 29% of the Earth's forests and the largest
taiga ecosystems can be found in Canada and Russia. The tundra ecosystems of the world are
found primarily in north Arctic Circle. This is consisted of short vegetation and essentially there
are no trees because the soil is frozen and it is covered with permafrost for a large portion of the
year.
Third is, ocean ecosystem is covers a big part of Earth where it have an area of 75%.
Oceanic ecosystem, have three types of classes such as shallow ocean waters, deep ocean
water, and deep ocean surface. For the deep ocean, there is no photosynthesis where it cannot
penetrate the light into the water.
Biosphere consists of all the environments on Earth that supports life.

At the lifes

hierarchy level of organization, the biosphere represents the totality of all things on Earth that
includes their interactions. The biosphere includes all ecosystems on Earth and also on how
they interact with each other. By default, the biosphere includes climate, geology, the oceans
and human pollution. For example the global climate changes, destruction of one ecosystem
like the Central and South America rainforest that can lead to a loss of global climate regulation,
and affect life on a part of Earth distant from the Amazon.

Conclusion
This term paper, teach us about how the world works and it helps us to know to examine
ourselves on how to conserve our habitat and its biodiversity. By this, we can predict what would
happen if we did not do our rule which is the proper taking care of everything that surrounds us.

http://education.seattlepi.com/ecological-hierarchy-4489.html
http://water.usgs.gov/edu/earthgwaquifer.html
http://wwf.panda.org/about_our_earth/ecoregions/philippines_freshwater.cfm
http://users.rcn.com/jkimball.ma.ultranet/BiologyPages/F/Freshwater.html

https://www.quora.com/What-are-some-examples-of-a-terrestrial-ecosystem
http://www.botany.uwc.ac.za/sci_ed/grade10/ecology/start.htm
http://www.eoearth.org/topics/view/51cbfc78f702fc2ba8129e5d/
https://www.boundless.com/biology/textbooks/boundless-biology-textbook/the-study-of-life1/themes-and-concepts-of-biology-49/levels-of-organization-of-living-things-269-11402/