Your Questions About Biomass Facts

Susan Your Questions About Biomass Facts

Susan asks…

Do you have any biomass energy facts?

I’m doing a project on biomass energy. I have found everything except for one question. I have spent a week on this projet and it’s due tomorrow. All answers appreciated.

thank you.

admin answers:

90% of available energy is used at each trophic level for growth and maintenance. Therefore, only 10% of the energy that was consumed by herbivores is available to 1st level carnivores. Then the 1st level carnivores use 90% of the energy for their growth and life’s maintenance. Therefore, only 10% of the energy they got from the herbivores is passed on to the 2nd level carnivores.

To summarize, 90% of available energy is used at each trophic level for growth and life maintenance and only 10% of the energy is passed on.,

So, let’s put some numbers to this concept. Remember that energy is measured in calories.

If autotrophs provide 100 calories to herbivores, the herbivores use 90 of the original calories for growth and maintenance (g&m). Thus, when 1st level carnivores eat the herbivores, they get only 10 of the original calories. The 1st level carnivores use 9 of the original 10 calories for g&m and pass only ONE of the original calories to the 2nd level carnivores. The 2nd level carnivores us 0.9 of the original calories and pass only 0.1 of the original calories onto 3rd level carnivores.

The result is that at each level, there are fewer and fewer calories available at each trophic level to sustain life and, for that reason, the biomass is dramatically less at each level.

The implication of that is for the future of humanity as all organisms on earth, except humans, are subject to the laws of nature. If there is not enough energy, then the biomass for all organisms except humans is limited. Our population is the only population that continues to grow without limits.

However, there is a limited amount of new sunlight coming to the Earth AND there is a finite amount of land or surface of the Earth on which plants can be grown. Therefore, if the human population continues to grow in the fashion it has over the past century, we will run out of food in the near future.

William Your Questions About Biomass Facts

William asks…

Why is biomass better than Hydroelectric energy?

Do you have at least 10 facts on why? Thank you.

admin answers:

Because mccain says so AHAHAH CHELSEA

James Your Questions About Biomass Facts

James asks…

Is This Biomass Fact True?

Is new material in plants called Biomass?

admin answers:

Biomass, in ecology, is the mass of living biological organisms in a given area or ecosystem at a given time

Lisa Your Questions About Biomass Facts

Lisa asks…

How appropriate do you think the use of biomass in australia is?

opinions and facts welcome icon smile Your Questions About Biomass Facts

admin answers:

Biomass in Australia is not only appropriate but has been used for billions of years. As humans we should start to put nature into our designs. If we design a building do we use solar to power and heat it. Do we use natural vegetation to shade and cool. Do we use waste water to water the lanscaping. Do we collect rain for filtration and use icon smile Your Questions About Biomass Facts

Paul Your Questions About Biomass Facts

Paul asks…

Help with pyramids of biomass and numbers?!?

I’m revising for a gcse science test and am getting a bit muddled with pyramids of biomass and pyramids of numbers. Is the biomass how much the animal at that trophic level weighs? And number is how many of them there is? Brief description and key facts would be great thanks

admin answers:

Its the weight (or mass really but that’s more physics). You eat tons and tons of food over your life time but you don’t weight a ton.

In order to maintain your body and move around, digest, and anything else that uses energy, you need to eat. The energy is broken down from food. In order to put on weight we need to eat more weight then is put on (the system is not perfect and energy is wasted and not all weight can utilized for energy)

So deer eat more grass then they weight in order to maintain themselves and cougars eat more deer then there body weight, The numbers are also Usually higher, but that’s mainly because it is easier to eat something smaller then you. But with insects feeding on a carcass, there are hundreds of insects but only 1 body. The weight each insect eats though, over its life time, will be many times its mass.

So the lower levels determine the maximum number of the higher levels, since even if the cougars ate all the deer they would weight less then all the deer.

Maria Your Questions About Biomass Facts

Maria asks…

How much algae grows in the oceans of Earth in an average year?

There seems to be data missing on facts about the potential of the biosphere and I wonder if anyone has ever read how much biomass is generated in nature. Algae is a big part of the total and it should be recorded somewhere how much is generated.

admin answers:

The figures of this would be astonomically high but there are ways to make an estimate.

Map the function of algae growth across Temperature and Salinity (probably inverse parabolic). Then map how much area of the worlds ocean to its nearest approximate integer point for each Temp-Salinity intersection (probably via a 3D normal distribution). Then multiply out- using an Excel function.

Equals Total Algae. You could simply use mean values for the above functions but your estimate would be around 50% less accurate.

Joseph Your Questions About Biomass Facts

Joseph asks…

Is biomass energy actually “carbon neutral?”?

As I learned in my resources geology class: biomass fuel is carbon neutral because burning it is only releasing carbon that was in the air before the plant converted it into other compounds.

Really? So are fossil fuels carbon neutral because they are merely releasing carbon that was in the atmosphere at an earlier point in time as well?

The facts appear to me that the carbon in biomass is essentially locked, and that loss will be deposited in the Ocean, where it would be locked in sedimentary rock or part of the natural carbon flux of the ocean., NOT directly deposited back into the troposphere.

Am I incorrect?
Forgot to say therefore it is not carbon neutral to sum things up.
Fermatsim, if the photosynthesis balances outgassing in CO2, then burning biomass would disrupt the balance….
Basically my problem is this: if the carbon cycle is naturally balanced through outgassing from volcanoes, photosynthesis, acid rain, oceanic diffusion, etc. Than how does burning back the carbon made in photosynthesis keep the balance?

Explain to me how that makes sense.
Also, it has been presented to me that the carbon cycle takes thousands of years to re-balance (hence ages of “snowball” and “hothouse” Earth). How would the burning have no effect (I realize that in the percentage of total carbon it may be a negligible effect on small scales, but that is not my question)?

admin answers:

When talking about carbon neutrality, only carbon deposited in the CURRENT biosphere is regarded; fossil fuels date back to different geological aeons, with completely different biospheres and climatologies back then, so they are not taken into account here.
While carbon deposited in the oceans as carbonates gets locked, this effect is more or less balanced by CO2 naturally released from geological sources such as volcanoes.
Biomass energy is therefore ‘carbon neutral’ in regards to our current biosphere.

EDIT: regarding your additional question: outgassing more or less balances the loss of carbon through oceanic depositions, but has nothing to do with photosynthesis. The amount of carbon involved in photosynthesis is orders of magnitude larger than that of carbon ‘lost’ via depositions and added through outgassing.
Photosynthesis is the major *biological* factor removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and counterbalances the major *biological* factors introducing carbon dioxide, with oxidation in the form of respiration the most important of them all. The carbon locked in biomass that is now burned in a power plant or your car would have been released anyway, because animals, fungi or bacteria would have digested and oxidized the bound carbon in the biomass, converting it (in the end) to released CO2.

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