ENVIRONMENTAL STUDIES Dr.

H U Raghavendra

ENERGY FLOW IN ECOSYSTEM

Energy-Defined
Energy can be defined as the capacity to do work, whether that work is on a gross scale as
raising mountains and moving air masses over continents, or on a small scale such as
transmitting a nerve impulse from one cell to another.

Laws of Thermodynamics
The expenditure and storage of energy is described by two laws of thermodynamics:

Law of conservation of energy: The law of conservation of energy states that energy is
neither created nor destroyed. In this process no gain or loss in total energy occurs. Energy
is simply transferred from one form or place to another.

Law of Decrease in Energy: The second law of thermodynamics states that on the
transformation of from one kind to another, there is an increase in entropy and a decrease
in the amount of useful energy. In this way, when coal in burned in a boiler to produce
steam, some of the energy creates steam that performs work, but part of the energy is
dispersed as heat to the surrounding air.

Three Sources of Energy

Three sources of energy account for all the work of the ecosystem. These sources are
Gravitation, Internal forces within the earth and solar radiation. The last one is significant
for ecosystem. The solar radiation, which originates from sun, is the source of energy for
life.

Ecosystems get energy originally from the Sun through the process of photosynthesis.
Light energy is used by plants to make food, which contains the chemical energy that plants
use for their life functions. 90% of this energy is used by the plant and the remaining 10%
is available to the herbivore that eats the plant. The herbivore uses 90% of this energy to
maintain life functions and provides the remaining 10% to the carnivore. Most of the
energy is used to maintain body heat, which escapes into the environment and cannot be
used. The flow of energy is one way.

Flow of energy in ecosystem:

The transfer of energy from one trophic level to another trophic level is called energy flow.
The energy flow in the ecosystem is from producers to consumers in one direction only
i.e., unidirectional. Thus in ecosystem, the source of energy is the light energy coming
from sun. This energy flows from producers to consumers i.e. from autotrophs to
heterotrophs in a cyclic manner.

CIVIL ENGINEERING DEPARTMENT, MSRIT, BANGALORE

ENVIRONMENTAL STUDIES Dr. H U Raghavendra

The flow of energy is never in the reverse direction i.e. the energy fixed by autotrophs does
not go back to the solar system or the energy which passes to herbivores does not go back
to autotrophs. In this transfer of energy from one trophic level to another, there is a gradual
loss of energy or it goes on decreasing. This is due to the energy released as heat during
various metabolic activities of the organisms. Hence the amount of energy available
decreases from one trophic level to another.

ENERGY FLOW AND MINERAL CYCLING

In the ecosystem, the unidirectional flow of energy and the cycling of nutrient elements
proceed concurrently. The flow of energy has been described as uni-directional and non-
cyclic. Whereas the decomposer mineralization activity is the movement of nutrients in
cycle. From energy flow point of view, it is essential to understand in an ecosystem:

 The producer efficiency in absorption and conversion of solar energy

 Utilization of this converted chemical form of energy by the consumers
 Total energy input in the form of food and its efficiency of assimilation (absorption)
 The losses through heat, respiration etc and
 The net production

CIVIL ENGINEERING DEPARTMENT, MSRIT, BANGALORE

ENVIRONMENTAL STUDIES Dr. H U Raghavendra

Material cycling in ecosystem

In ecosystems flow of energy is linear but that of nutrients is cyclical. Nutrient or

Biogeochemical cycles (Bio=living, geo=rock, chemical=element) describe the circulation of
matter, particularly plant and animal nutrients, through ecosystems.

Most biogeochemical cycles can be described as elemental cycles involving nutrient

elements such as carbon, oxygen, nitrogen, sulfur and phosphorus.

Carbon Cycle
Carbon, the basic building block of life molecules, is circulated through the carbon cycle.
This cycle shows that carbon may be present as gaseous atmospheric CO2, dissolved in
groundwater as HCO3, in underlying rock strata as limestone (CaCO3), and as organic
matter. Photosynthesis fixes inorganic carbon as biological carbon, which is a constituent of
all life molecules.
An important aspect of the carbon cycle is that it is the cycle by which energy is transferred
to biological systems. Organic or biological carbon, (CH2O), is an energy-rich molecule that
can react biochemically with molecular oxygen, O2, to regenerate carbon dioxide and
produce energy. This can occur in an organism as shown by the “decay” reaction or it may
take place as combustion, such as when wood is burned.

Oxygen Cycle
The oxygen cycle involves the interchange of oxygen between the elemental form of
gaseous O2 in the atmosphere and chemically bound O in CO2, H2O, and organic matter.
Elemental oxygen becomes chemically bound by various energy-yielding processes,
particularly combustion and metabolic processes in organisms. It is released during
photosynthesis.

CIVIL ENGINEERING DEPARTMENT, MSRIT, BANGALORE

ENVIRONMENTAL STUDIES Dr. H U Raghavendra

Nitrogen Cycle
Nitrogen, though constituting much less of biomass than carbon or oxygen, is an essential
constituent of proteins. The atmosphere is 78% by volume elemental nitrogen, N 2 and
constitutes an inexhaustible reservoir of this essential element. The N2 molecule is very
stable so that breaking it down to atoms that can be incorporated in inorganic and organic
chemical forms of nitrogen is the limiting step in the nitrogen cycle. This does occur by
highly energetic processes in lightning discharges such that nitrogen becomes chemically
combined with hydrogen or oxygen as ammonia or nitrogen oxides. Elemental nitrogen is
also incorporated into chemically bound forms or fixed by biochemical processes mediated
by microorganisms. The biological nitrogen is returned to the inorganic form during the
decay of biomass by a process called mineralization.

CIVIL ENGINEERING DEPARTMENT, MSRIT, BANGALORE

ENVIRONMENTAL STUDIES Dr. H U Raghavendra

Phosphorus cycle
The phosphorus cycle is crucial because phosphorus is usually the limiting nutrient in
ecosystems. There are no common stable gaseous forms of phosphorus, so the phosphorus
cycle is strictly sedimentary. In the geosphere phosphorus is held largely in poorly soluble
minerals, such as hydroxyapatite, a calcium salt. Soluble phosphorus from these minerals
and other sources, such as fertilizers, is taken up by plants and incorporated into the
nucleic acids of biomass. Mineralization of biomass by microbial decay returns phosphorus
to the salt solution from which it may precipitate as mineral matter.

Sulfur cycle
The sulfur cycle is relatively complex. It involves several gaseous species, poorly soluble
minerals, and several species in solution. It is involved with the oxygen cycle in that sulfur
combines with oxygen to form gaseous sulfur di oxide (SO2) an atmospheric pollutant, and
2-
soluble sulfate ion, (SO4 ). Among the significant species involved in the sulfur cycle are
gaseous hydrogen sulfide, H2S; mineral sulfides, such as PbS; sulfuric acid, H2SO4, the main
constituent of acid rain; and biologically bound sulfur in sulfur-containing proteins.

CIVIL ENGINEERING DEPARTMENT, MSRIT, BANGALORE