Energy In an Ecosystem

Author’s note: I wrote this piece as a way to show how energy works in the world, not just list of types of energy. In this piece I was trying to organize my ideas in a way that they flow together and connect. I was also trying to refrain from saying that energy was created or lost to show my understanding of the law of conservation of energy.

Energy is all around us and affects every aspect of our life, from waking up in the morning to heating our breakfast. Every movement, every step, every breath takes the transformation of energy. This is especially true in the non-domestic world. A food chain is just a simplified version of the energy chain of the same ecosystem.  To understand how energy moves through a large ecosystem, you must first understand how energy transformations works.

The Law of Conservation of Energy states that Energy may neither created nor destroyed (“The Law of Conservation of Energy”, n.d., para  1). This means that the amount of energy in the world is constant.  At a young age though, we were taught that we needed food because food helped our body create energy. Since we now understand that energy cannot be created, the question stands: how do we get energy from food? 

The sun is not only in the center of our galaxy, but it is also is the start of the majority of energy in our world. The sun gives off two main types of energy from a reaction to nuclear fusion: heat and light (“The Energy Story”, n.d., Nuclear Fusion, para 2). Plants then use the heat from the sun to make food, glucose that they need to survive. Every food that we eat has potential energy in the form of nutrients and molecule compounds.  The food, sugar in this case, is broke down into chemical energy that the plants need. The plant is then eaten by a primary consumer, or an herbivore. The potential energy in the plant is broken down and turned into chemical energy for the animal, but not all the energy is then stored from the plant. In an ecosystem, typically ten percent of the original energy is transferred between trophic levels. The energy that is not transferred is transformed into many different type of energy. Heat is the most prevalent type of energy that is lost in transfers of energy.  These transfers continue until the energy comes to the top of the food chain, and an animal dies. When this occurs, decomposers, such as bacteria or worms, break down the nutrients in from the animal. These nutrients are stored as potential energy in soil. The biggest misconception is that energy moves in a cycle, but the energy from the sun is never returned. The energy stays in the ecosystem, while energy is still being transformed from the sun’s heat. This is how ecosystems grow and prosper. Below is a simplified energy web of the most prevalent and vast ecosystems in the world; the rain forest. 

In this chart the jambu, an apple like fruit, uses the heat from the sun and the nutrients from the soil to create fruit through photosynthesis. This fruit stores potential energy in the form of nutrients that the stomach of the tapir digests. When food is digested it becomes chemical energy that the body can use. The majority of the energy that the tapir eats is transformed into heat and other types of energies. When the jaguar eventually consumes the tapir, the remaining potential energy from the tapir is digested the same as the tapir eating the plant. When the jaguar eventually dies bacteria decomposes the nutrients of the jaguar leaving the potential energy from the animal in the soil. The jambu then takes these nutrients and the process starts over. Energy  isn't called a cycle is because the energy is not returned to the sun. Energy moves through ecosystems in a unique way unlike many comparable processes. 

Energy moves through the world unlike many other abiotic feature in ecosystems. There is the water cycle, the carbon cycle, nitrogen cycle, and the energy process. Energy cannot be created or lost, but it can transform into many different types of energy. Energy jumps from source to source, allowing ecosystems to sustain the way they have. All of this matters because this is why displacing too much of any part of an ecosystem can eliminate how the whole system works. This should make us think before we strip whole forest and hunt a species to extinction.