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In this Physics video for Class 10 in Hindi we discussed on our environment and we explained what ecosystem, food chain and food web are. This is a topic of Chapter 15 - 'Our Environment' from NCERT for Class 10.
The surroundings or conditions in which a person, animal, or plant lives or operates is called its environment. The surroundings can be biotic or abiotic.
A biological community of interacting organisms and their physical environment is called an ecosystem.
An ecosystem consists of producers, consumers and decomposers.
Plants and photosynthetic bacteria are the producers, which traps the energy from sunlight and produces food.
Organisms which feed on those plants or other organisms are called consumers. They are herbivores, carnivores, omnivores and parasites.
Decomposers decompose the dead bodies. e.g., some bacteria, fungi, worms etc.
Food chain is a series of organisms each dependent on the previous as a source of food.
Each step or level of the food chain forms a trophic level.
Producers are autotrophs or are at the first trophic level. Primary consumers are at the second trophic level. And so on....
Food we eat acts as a fuel to provide us energy to do work. Energy in form of food moves from lower trophic level to higher trophic level.
The green plants in a terrestrial ecosystem capture about 1% of the energy of sunlight that falls on their leaves and convert it into food energy.
When green plants are eaten by primary consumers, a great deal of energy is lost as heat to the environment, some amount goes into digestion and in doing work and the rest goes towards growth and reproduction. An average of 10% of the food eaten is turned into its own body and made available for the next level of consumers.
Very little amount of energy is available for the next level of consumers, food chains generally consist of only three or four steps.
The loss of energy at each step is so great that very little usable energy remains after four trophic levels.
There are generally a greater number of individuals at the lower trophic levels of an ecosystem, the greatest number is of the producers.
The length and complexity of food chains vary greatly. Each organism is generally eaten by two or more other kinds of organisms which in turn are eaten by several other organisms. So instead of a straight line food chain, the relationship can be shown as a series of branching lines called a food web.
Flow of energy is unidirectional. The energy that is captured by the autotrophs does not revert back to the solar input and the energy which passes to the herbivores does not come back to autotrophs. As it moves progressively through the various trophic levels it is no longer available to the previous level.
The energy available at each trophic level gets diminished progressively due to loss of energy at each level.
Harmful chemicals enter our bodies through the food chain. For example, when water gets polluted due to the use of several pesticides and other chemicals to protect our crops from diseases and pests. These chemicals are either washed down into the soil or into the water bodies.
From the soil, these are absorbed by the plants along with water and minerals, and from the water bodies these are taken up by aquatic plants and animals. This is one of the ways in which they enter the food chain.
As these chemicals are not degradable, these get accumulated progressively at each trophic level. As human beings occupy the top level in any food chain, the maximum concentration of these chemicals
get accumulated in our bodies. This phenomenon is known as biological magnification.
The amount of ozone in the atmosphere began to drop sharply in the 1980s. This decrease has been linked to chemicals like chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) which are used as refrigerants and in fire extinguishers.
In 1987, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) succeeded in forging an agreement to freeze CFC production at 1986 levels. It is now mandatory for all the manufacturing companies to make CFC-free refrigerators throughout the world.
Many human-made materials like plastics are not broken down by the action of bacteria or other saprophytes. These materials are known as non-biodegradable materials.
Under the ambient conditions found in our environment, these materials persist for a long time and harm the various members of the eco-system.