The Biosphere Crossword Puzzle

QUESTIONS LIST: food web: feeding relationships among various organisms in an ecosystem, biosphere: combined portions of earth in which all life exists, denitrification: soil bacteria convert nitrates into nitrogen gas in order to release nitrogen gas into the atmosphere, ecosystem: collection of all the organisms that live in a particular place, together with their non living, or physical, environment, trophic level: each step in a food chain or food web, biome: group of ecosystems that have the same climate and similar dominant communities, species: a group of organisms so similar to on another that they can breed and produce fertile offspring, community: assemblages of different populations that live together in a defined area, nutrient: all chemical substances that an organism needs to sustain life, biomass: total amount of living tissue within a given trophic level, chemo synthesis: process in which organisms use chemical energy to produce carbohydrates, evaporation: process in which water changes from liquid form to atmospheric gas, limiting nutrient: when an ecosystem is limited by a single nutrient that is scarce or cycles very slowly, ecology: the scientific study of interactions among organisms and between organisms and their environment, autotroph: capture energy from sunlight or chemicals and use that energy to produce food; another term for producer, decomposer: break down organic matter. fungi, bacteria, & insects, transpiration: process in which water evaporates through the leaves of a plant, food chain: a series of steps in which organisms transfer energy by eating or being eaten, detrivore: organisms that feed on plant and animal remains and other dead matter, population: groups of individuals that belong to the same species and live in the same area.