The abiotic environment includes non-living factors like sunlight, soil, water, and pollution, while the biotic environment includes living organisms and factors like disease, predators, and human activity. Both are necessary for survival, with sunlight being essential for energy flow. Elements like carbon, nitrogen, and phosphorus are reused in a closed system, and water conditions affect the types of life that can survive. Changing conditions require adaptation, and life also affects the non-living world through pollution and human activity.
The abiotic environment includes all non-living factors and processes in an ecosystem. Sunlight, soil, water and pollution, for example, are all important abiotic factors in an environment that influence life. The biotic environment, on the other hand, is made up of all living organisms in an ecosystem and includes factors such as disease, predators, prey items, and human activity. Life depends on both of these environments for survival.
Sunlight, an abiotic factor, makes life possible in almost all ecosystems. Green plants take solar energy and convert it into chemical energy through photosynthesis. When animals eat plants, energy moves through the biotic environment and is ultimately expended as heat. This basic energy flow shows how closely the abiotic and biotic components are related. This cycle is called an open system because it relies on the sun, a source outside the Earth.
Organisms also need basic elements, such as carbon, nitrogen and phosphorus. These elements are abiotic when found in water or soil, but pass through plants and organisms as nutrients through food and hydration. After an animal excretes or dies, bacteria break down these nutrients, returning them to the abiotic environment. Apart from the occasional meteorite from outer space, no new elements enter this closed system. The same components are used and reused over and over again: the elements consumed by dinosaurs to survive are the same elements that people use today.
Water is another essential part of the abiotic environment. Factors such as availability, movement, temperature, saltiness, oxygen concentration, pH level and chemical components influence the types of life that can survive in an ecosystem. Whether it’s an ocean, lake or river, water conditions can change suddenly or seasonally, affecting organisms that depend on water for survival.
For all abiotic aspects of the environment, changing conditions require organisms to adapt or otherwise die. For example, a drought, flood, volcanic eruption or earthquake drastically alters factors such as the weather, water conditions or even the elements and nutrients available in the soil. Even small and subtle changes can have major effects. Slight changes in water temperature can affect the ability of aquatic life to both breathe and move because the density of water changes with temperature.
It may seem that living creatures and plants are at the mercy of the abiotic environment, but in reality, life also affects the non-living world. Pollution, for example, is a byproduct of biotic life that changes the quality of water, air or soil. As evidenced by rising CO2 levels in the atmosphere, human activities are currently also changing the environment.
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