Ecosystems energy

Salonen, K. Kairesalo, T. Jones, R. I., Eds. Hydrobiologia (Dissolved Organic Matter in Lacustrine Ecosystems Energy Source and System Regulator) 1992, 229, 1-291. 

Gosz, J.R., et al. "Mineral Cycling in Southeastern Ecosystems", Energy Research and Development Adminsitration. CONF-740513, 1975 pp 630-41. 

The purpose of chemical processes is not to make chemicals The purpose is to make money. However, the profit must he made as part of a sustainable industrial activity which retains the capacity of ecosystems to support industrial activity and life. This means that process waste must be taken to its practical and economic minimum. Relying on methods of waste treatment is usually not adequate, since waste treatment processes tend not so much to solve the waste problem but simply to move it from one place to another. Sustainable industrial activity also means that energy consumption must be taken to its practical and economic minimum. Chemical processes also must not present significant short-term or long-term hazards, either to the operating personnel or to the community. 

Chemical processes will in the future need to be designed as part of a sustainable industrial development which retains the capacity of ecosystems to support industrial activity and life. This book therefore places a high emphasis on waste minimization and energy efficiency in the context of good economic performance and good health and safety practices. 

The population size of a particular species that can be supported in any given ecosystem depends on the resource needs—ultimately, the energy needs—of that species. 

In a temperate forest ecosystem on Isle Royale, Michigan, ecologists found that it takes 762 pounds (346 kg) of plant food to support every 59 pounds (27 kg) of moose, and that 59 pounds of moose are required to support every one pound (0.45 kg) of wolf. The basic point is that massive amounts of energy do not flow from one trophic level to the next energy is lost at each stage of the food chain, so there are more plants than herbivores and more herbivores than carnivores. 

The energy flow through an ecosystem is the most important factor determining the numbers, the types, and the interactions of the plants and animals in that ecosystem. 

Regardless of the "harvesting" method, before these vast methane hydrate reserves can become a viable energy source, ways must be found to minimize the impact to the ocean floor and ocean-bottom ecosystems, and to limit the amount of methane escaping into the atmosphere. 

See also Biological Energy Use, Ecosystem Functioning of Conseiwation of Energy Flywheels ... 

Environmental chemists funded by the Department of Energy have studied these sources to learn as much as they can about the chemistry of plutonium dispersed in freshwater and marine ecosystems. Much of the early work determined the concentrations in various water bodies and the distribution between water and sediment. Table I shows results of various freshwater and marine surveys(10). 

Figure 5. Paradigm of energy flow within the Antarctic marine ecosystem. (Reproduced with permission from reference 33 by the Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research of the International Council of Scientific Unions. Copyright 1987.)...

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