Systems Notes

SYSTEM: an assemblage of parts and their relationship forming a functioning entirety or whole.

During the 1970s, British chemist James Lovelock and American biologist Lynn Margulis came up with
the GAIA HYPOTHESIS: That the world acts like a single biological being made up of many individual
and interconnected units ( A SYSTEM ).

Gaia was the Greek Earth goddess

figure 1. A systematic view of the Earths biological and chemical components

The Components

The Earths systems comprise interactions between the living ( Biotic ) and non-living ( Abiotic )
constituent parts. As in any system these interactions involve INPUTS, PROCESSING of the inputs to
create OUPUTS.

Even if we look at the starting point of all food chains on Earth, photosynthesis and conversion of light
energy to stored chemical energy in the leaf, this to can be viewed as a system component within a
bigger system.
So Photosynthesis comprises inputs, a process and outputs

But photosynthesis is also a component in a larger system. A food chain the initial light energy gets
processed and converted into chemical energy (food) that is passed along the system.

Yet if you take each of the organisms in the diagram above and place them in individual plant pots or
cages at a zoo and the system breaks down: the interactions between the components are what make
the system not the components themselves

Systems can be thought of as fitting into one of three types: Open (exchange matter and energy with
its surroundings), Closed and Isolated
Open Systems: exchange matter and energy with its surroundings.

Most systems are open, including ecosystems. In forest ecosystems plants fix energy from light
entering the system during photosynthesis. Nitrogen is fixed by soil bacteria. Herbivores that live
within the forest canopy may graze in adjacent ecosystems such as a grassland, but when they return
they enrich the soil with feces. After a forest fire top soil may be removed by wind and rain. Mineral
nutrients are dissolved out of the soil and transported in ground water to streams and rivers.

Open system models can even be applied to the remotest oceanic island - energy and mater is
exchanged with the atmosphere, surrounding oceans and even migratory birds.
It is important to remember that if we are thinking in the terms of systems, then each component of
a system is surrounded by a larger environment. A single tree ( a system in its own right ) within a
forest system exchanges energy and material with the surrounding forest.

Closed Systems: exchange energy but not matter.

Closed systems are extremely rare in nature. No

natural closed systems exist on Earth but the
planet itself can be thought of as an almost
closed system.Light energy in large amounts
enters the Earths system and some is eventually
returned to space a long wave radiation (heat).

Biosphere 2 was a human attempt to create a

habitable Closed system on Earth. build in Arizona
 at the end of the 1980s Biosphere 2 was intended
to explore the use of closed biospheres in space
colonization. Two major missions were conducted but both run into problems. The Biosphere never
managed to produce enough food to adequately sustain the the participants and at times oxygen
levels became dangerously low and needed augmenting.

Wikipeadia article about Biosphere 2

Isolated Systems: An isolated system exchanges neither matter nor energy.

These do not exist naturally. Though it is possible to think of the entire Universe as an isolated
system.

Energy in all systems is subject to the Laws of Thermodynamics.

According to the First Law of Thermodynamics: Energy is neither created or destroyed. What
this really means is that the total energy in any system including the entire universe is constant all
that can happen is that the form the energy takes changes. This first law is often called the law of
conservation of energy.
In the food chain above the energy enters the system as light energy, during photosynthesis it gets
converted to stored chemical energy (glucose). It is the stored chemical energy that is passed along
as food. No new energy is created it is just passed along.

Even if we look at the sunlight falling on Earth not all of it is used for photosynthesis.

30% is reflected, around 50% is converted to heat, and most of the rest powers the hydrological cycle
- rain, evaporation, wind, etc. Less than 1% of incoming light is use for photosynthesis.

The Second Law of Thermodynamics states that the entropy of an isolated system not in
equilibrium will tend to increase over time. what this really means is that the energy conversions are
never 100% efficient: When energy is transformed into work, some energy is always dissipated as
waste heat.
 If you examine the food chain again in terms of the
second law then: when the lion chases the zebra, the zebra attempts to escape changing the stored
chemical energy in its cells into useful work. But during its attempted escape some of the stored
energy is converted to heat and lost from the food chain.

This process can be summarized by a simple diagram showing the energy input and outputs.

The Second Law can also be thought off as a simple word equation:

ENERGY = WORK + HEAT (and other wasted energy)

So what does the term ENTROPY mean?

Entropy refers to the spreading out or dispersal of energy. Using the above example the energy
spreads out - the useful energy consumed by one level is less than the total energy at the level below
- energy transfer is never 100% efficient.

Depending on the plant their efficiency at converting solar energy to stored sugars is around 2%.
Herbivores on average only use around 10% of the total plant energy they consume the rest is lost in
metabolic processes and a carnivores efficiency is also only around 10%.

So the carnivores total efficiency in the chain is 0.02 x 0.1 x 0.1 = 0.0002

This means the carnivore only uses 0.02% of incoming solar energy that went into the grass. The
rest of the energy is dispered into the surrounding environment.

Open systems tend to exist in a state of balance: Equilibrium. Equilibrium avoids sudden changes in
a system, though this does not mean that all systems are none changing. If change exists it tends to
exist between limits. We can therefore think of equilibrium states in two ways STATIC and STEADY
STATE.

Static Equilibrium is where the components of a system remain constant over a long period of time.
Possibly the best example of static equilibrium in the environmental system in which we ourselves
have to survive is the oxygen content of the atmosphere.

Around 4 billion years ago there was very little oxygen in the atmosphere. Why? Our planet was void
of life. Then life appeared and importantly photosynthesizing life, first cyanobacteria (bacteria with
chlorophyll) and later plants. Both of which produce molecular oxygen a a waste product.

As the oxygen levels rose so a new type of organism appeared that could use the external oxygen
in respiration - animals - and so the Oxygen cycle was born. Eventually over time a balance was
achieved in the level of atmospheric oxygen and for the last 2 billion years, plants and animals have
held the oxygen level stable at 21% of the atmosphere.

Steady State equilibria: this is a much

harder concept to define and there are still arguments for what a dynamic equilibrium really is. The
best way to think about it is that a system is in a steady state because the inputs and outputs that
affect it approximately balance over a long period of time.

An example of this can be seen in a classic study of the populations of Snowshoe Hares and Lynx in
Canada. As the population of the Lynx rises the Hare population falls this is then followed by a fall in
the Lynx population which in itself is followed by a rise in the Hare population etc. etc.

Systems are continually affected by information they have to react to from both within and outside.
Two simplistic examples, if you start to feel cold you can either put on more clothes or turn the
heating up. The sense of cold is information putting on clothes is the reaction. Secondly if you feel
hungry, you have a choice of reactions that you can take to this information

Natural systems act in exactly the same way. The information starts a reaction which in turn may
input more information which may start another reaction. This is called a Feedback Loop.

Negative Feedback:this tends to damp down, neutralize or counteract any deviation from an
equilibrium, and promotes stability.
Using the example of the Snowshoe Hare / Lynx population cycle presented in the last section

When Hare the population is high, there is surplus food for the Lynx so their numbers go up. This puts
a pressure on the Hare population as more are eaten and their numbers fall. Less food for the Lynx
so they start to starve and their numbers fall. Fewer Lynx means fewer hares are eaten and their
numbers start to go back up. And so it continues as a loop. Explaining it in words is very cumbersome
so the diagram is a much better way.

Both energy and matter flows (inputs and outputs) through ecosystems but at times is also stored
(stock) within the ecosystem:

The Biogeochemical Cycle illustrates the general flows in an ecosystem.

Energy flows from one compartment to another. E.g. a food chain. But when one organism eats
another organism the energy that moves between them is in the form of stored chemical energy:
Flesh

Energy Flows through an ecosystems in the form of carboncarbon bonds within organic compounds.
These bonds ae broken during respiration when carbon joins with oxygen to produce carbon dioxide.
Respiration releases enrgy that is either used by organisms (life processes) or is lost as heat.

The origin of all the energy in an ecosystem is the sun and the fate of the energy is eventually to be
released as heat
In the diagram above the flow of energy is shown by the red arrows.

Unlike energy MATTER cycles through the system as minerals (blue arrows). Plants absorb mineral
nutrients from the soil. These nutrients are combined in to cells. Consumers eat plants and other
consumers egest the minerals they contain and re-combining them in cells. Eventually decomposers
break down dead organic matter (DOM) and then return the minerals to the soil. These minerals may
betaken out of the soil quickly by plants or can eventually through geological processes become locked
within rocks until erosion eventually returns them to new soil.

The geochemical cycles illustrate the flows and storage of

energy and matter: The carbon cycle shows the flow of both where as the other geochemical cycles
e.g. nitrogen only show the flow and storage of matter.

In both cases though the direction of the flow - producer to consumer, and the magnitude - loss of
material up a food chain, amount of carbon dioxide moving from respiration and combustion to the
atmosphere, can be described.
 Top of Form

Bottom of Form

Positive Feedback amplifies or increases change; it leads to exponential deviation away from an
equilibrium.

An example of this is the possible effect that rising global temperature could have by adding more
water vapor to the atmosphere. Water is a powerful greenhouse molecule trapping heat in the
atmosphere. If there is a global temperature rise more water will evaporate trapping more heat
making more water evaporate trapping more heat and on and on. Again a diagram helps explain the
idea.