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Unit 3 - Biology Review - Coggle Diagram
Unit 3 - Biology Review
Lesson 2 - The Importance of Plants
Root, stem and leaf are the main plant organs. The mesophyll of the leaf is the tissue that is most responsible for energy production.
Abiotic and biotic (living and nonliving) factors can be measured and can influence one another.
Producers make up the base of any ecosystem, as they provide energy to the community of consumers. Grasses and phytoplankton are two examples of producers in terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems, respectively.
There is a diversity of plants in ecosystems, which we can describe by observing their structure.
Ecosystems are habitats populated by a community of living beings
Lesson 1 -The importance of water
Photosynthesis is the anabolic process that makes energy available for consumers of energy.
Photosynthesis happens in green parts of the plant, in the chloroplast.
Chlorophyll absorbs light, which photosystems use to obtain energy out of water
As humans, we consume water for drinking, sanitation, food production and industrial uses
Water is fundamental in the environment for three main reasons
Firstly, water is an integral part of the environment: it is a habitat and it regulates temperature.
Also, Every organism is water-based: cells are made of water and chemical reactions in a cell happen in a solution
Lastly, water is an ingredient in photosynthesis
Lesson 4 - Is AI Sustainable
Sustainability is the ability of some system to function efficiently over long periods of time.
We can identify three pillars of sustainability: environmental, social and economic.
Environmental sustainability takes place when natural resources are safe and stable over time
Social sustainability requires that healthcare, education and law work effectively, ensuring good quality of life and respect of human rights
Economic sustainability requires that prices are stable and companies are profitable in the long term.
Different people might have different models of sustainability, prioritising those three pillars differently.
Some people consider sustainability only possible when environmental sustainability is reached.
Systems can be visually modelled with storages and flows.
Storages are the amount of matter or energy present in a given time and space. They are represented by boxes.
Flows are either transfers (from a place to another) or transformations (from something to something else) of matter or energy
Modelling a system can help us visualise its sustainability, in particular when it comes to resource use.
Modelling the Earth system can help us visualise anthropogenic carbon emissions and how they cause global warming, which in turn causes climate change.
Lesson 3 - The Importance of Biodiversity
There is a relationship between biodiversity and resilience. The greater the biodiversity of a community, the greater its ability to resist unchanged over time or resilience.
Monocultures and habitat fragmentation can reduce biodiversity, therefore undermining the resilience of those ecosystems.
Biodiversity is a measure of differences/variety between living beings. Usually, the term refers more specifically to
Species biodiversity, that is the differences in size and number of populations of different species
genetic biodiversity, that is the differences in traits between individuals of the same species.
Biodiversity can be measured by a diversity index. The Simpson Diversity index (D) can be used to compare the biodiversity of different communities.
Communities can have the same species richness (number of species) but have a different evenness (different size populations). The more even the community, the more biodiverse it is.
Lesson 5 - What is Pollution?
There are three main strategies to address pollution: Reduce, Regulate and Remedy. Those are also defined as pollution management strategies.
Reduction requires preventing the pollutant from being produced. This is usually do
For example, single use plastic production can be banned to prevent it from polluting the environment. This strategy could be the most effective, but not the most convenient or socially acceptable.
Regulating the release of the pollutant means that the pollutant is produced but something is done to prevent that it ends up in the environment, preventing that it causes pollution.
An example is plastic caps attached to the bottles required by European Union legislation. The plastic cap is produced (as not producing it might not be convenient) but its release, its separation from the bottle might cause littering.
Remedy is the last line of defence and it requires restoring the ecosystem after it has been contaminated or polluted.
Plastic cleanup, that is collection of plastic garbage on the riverside or the beach, is a classical remediation strategy.
Remedy can be effective, but one would hope to prevent pollution rather than restoring the situation once it has caused harm to the environment.
Pollution is defined as:
That is anthropogenic, ie. is caused by human activities,
That is anthropogenic, ie. is caused by human activities,
The release of energy (sound, heat) or matter (a chemical) in the environment,
There are two types of pollution:
Point source pollution, where the source of the pollutant is easily identifiable and comes from one clear source. For example, sewage water being released in a protected area. This is the easiest type of pollution to address.
Non-point source pollution, where the source of the pollutant is diffused throughout a region or not clearly identifiable to one precise source. For example, microplastics from degraded tyres bits being washed out into rivers. This is the hardest type of pollution to address.
Reduction and prevention strategies are the most environmentally sustainable but can be socially sustainable only when alternatives are convenient.
Regulating strategies are a compromise between environmental sustainability and social-economic sustainability.
Remediation strategies are the least environmentally sustainable strategies, but might be the only acceptable choice if alternatives are socially and economically convenient.
The source of pollution is defined as pollutant or contaminant.