Revise

This week you will revise ecosystems and tropical rainforests. It would help if you covered the following:

• An example of a small-scale UK ecosystem to illustrate the concept of interrelationships within a natural system, an understanding of producers, consumers, decomposers, food chain, food web and nutrient cycling – Epping Forest
• The balance between components.
• The impact on the ecosystem of changing one component.
• An overview of the distribution and characteristics of large-scale natural global ecosystems.
• The physical characteristics of a tropical rainforest – vegetation | climate and the nutrient cycle
• The interdependence of climate, water, soils, plants, animals and people.
• How plants and animals adapt to physical conditions.
• Issues related to biodiversity.
• Changing rates of deforestation.
• A case study of a tropical rainforest to illustrate:
  • causes of deforestation – subsistence and commercial farming, logging, road building, mineral extraction, energy development, settlement, population growth – (The Amazon | Malaysia)
  • impacts of deforestation – economic development, soil erosion, contribution to climate change. (The Amazon | Malaysia)
• Value of tropical rainforests to people and the environment.
• Strategies used to manage the rainforest sustainably – selective logging and replanting, conservation and education, ecotourism and international agreements about using tropical hardwoods, and debt reduction.

Use one of the three strategies below to revise these areas.