Nutrient Cycling

- In small scale ecosystems.

Stores
1
2
3
Flows
1
2
3
Inputs
Outputs
As before but which
stores are bigger and
which are smaller?

And the same question

for flows
(and why the
difference?)
 

 
Nutrient
Cycling
models for
BIOMES

But these are

large scale
ecosystems!
                                                  

(Gersmehl)
                       
Figure 17.  Nutrient cycling models for
world
  biomes (after Gersmehl 1976).
Nutrient Cycling for a Deciduous
Wood.
Nutrient
cycling
for a
Corn /
Beef
farm
 The 1st October
saw the start of the
muirburn season in
Scotland – a
process which
ensures the re-
generation of
heather to provide
a mixture of young,
intermediate and
mature heather
used as a food
source, nesting
habitat and shelter
by the many
Snow reveals the pattern of muirburn animals and birds
strips. MOORLAND ECOSYSTEM which inhabit
moorland.
On most kinds of
moorland, over
time, plant
nutrients become
locked away and
relatively
unavailable in the
woody stems of
heather, and other
dwarf-shrubs, and
in the very slowly
decaying plant
litter.
This also results in reduced food quality for
herbivorous animals. Fire helps to release the
unavailable nutrients for further use and, biologically,
it is like much accelerated decomposition.
Soluble mineral plant nutrients like potassium, calcium and
magnesium become more available, the soil becomes less
acid, and charcoal particles are deposited and become
incorporated into the soil.
After a fire,
regenerating
heather shoots
may contain up
to twice the
amount of
nitrogen and
phosphorus as
shoots from pre-
fire heather
bushes, although
this effect
disappears quite
rapidly over the
first four to five
years after
burning.