Data Based Questions

Nutrient Cycles - page 185

1. Above ground would include plants that absorb the nutrients from the soil and roots
below ground and are available above ground for consumers to eat.
2. The biome with the largest above ground compartment is the equatorial forest.
3. It is hard to grow crops in an area where equatorial forest has been cleared of its
vegetation because its nutrients are stored mainly above ground and therefore there would
be a shortage of nutrients for the organisms in the ecosystem to survive off of.
4. Decomposers and detritus feeders eat dead matter and change the nutrients back to
their inorganic form and releases the back into the atmosphere through respiration and
excretion.
5. Most of the nitrogen in a tundra is in the soil because it is an area with very rich soil with
little vegetation so all nitrogen is stored in the soil.
6. Warming due to climate change might cause a release of CO2 because it warms the soil
and allows the CO2 to move more easily through the soil and be released into the
atmosphere.

Release of Carbon from Tundra Soils - page 186

1. A) When the soils was kept moist there was more carbon released from the soil
especially when it was at 15 degrees which was 15% higher than the 7 degree moist soil.
The soil saturated with water released almost the same amount of carbon at both
temperatures
B) The heat allows for the carbon to be evaporated easier , the higher the heat is the
quicker the carbon evaporates allowing more to be released in the same amount of time.
2. A) There is more carbon released when the soil is kept moist. When the soil is too wet
there is a significant amount less carbon released
B) This is because carbon is absorbed by the water and if there is too much it cannot be
released however if the soil is only moist the carbon is still able to be released back into
the atmosphere
3. The fertilizer generally allows more carbon to be released than the soil without fertilizer,
especially in the moist soil as those with fertilizer in moist soil have the most carbon
released.
4. The moistness of the water impacts the release of carbon the greatest, the soil that is
moist releases the most carbon and the release just raises with the addition of fertilizer
and temperature. However the most significant difference is between the water saturated
soil and the moist soil where the moist soil releases much more.

Phenology - page 188

1. A) The leaves opened the earliest in 1999

B) The mean temperature was at its lowest in 1994
2. A) When the temperature is warmer the leaves open earlier, when the temperature is
around 0 the leaves open at the mean and when the temperature is colder the leaves open
later.
B) The graph shows the increase in heat at the same time of year. In 1970 the temperature
was low at -2 in March and April but it gradually increased to +2 in 1980 and then got even
 higher at +3 in 2000, this shows that year by year the heat is increasing showing that there
is evidence of global warming toward the end of the 20th century.

Spruce Bark Beetles - page 191

A) The drought index remained high from 1990-2000 and in 1965-1970

B) i) in the 1970s there were just under 500 beetles and in the 1990s after the drop in the
1980s go back up to around 500 beetles but instead of fluctuating like the 1970s there is a
steady number that remains for the beginning of the 1990s before flying up to almost 2000
near the end of the 1990s.
ii) The reasons for the differences are that in the 1970s the air was more cool and moist so
the beetles were not able to survive long enough to carry out their life cycle, however in the
1990s the temperature spiked to very warm and dry conditions allowing the beetle to
survive and complete its lifecycle and breed again as they live in warm temperatures.
C) Looking at the graph, there was a drop in the beetles in 200 down to about 250 from
2000. This could be caused by a drop in temperature for a year or two, however based on
global warming one would assume that due to the extra heating of the atmosphere, the
mean temperature will rise causing the beetles to have another outbreak as there was in
the 1990s. This would lead to extreme damage comparing to the 400,000 hectares of trees
that were destroyed in 1992. This would cause me to believe that there is going to be a
high rate of damage in the future as our planet continues to slowly heat.