Dear MBER Users,
Ecosystems will be available here on the website in August 2024. In the meantime, we ask that you connect instead to the Matter Cycles and Energy Flow units, found on the MBER-Bio website, Year-At-A-Glance page. (Note: You must be logged into the MBER-Bio website for these hyperlinks to work.) These units still cover the needed content around the flow of matter and energy at the ecosystem level, building on the exploration of what happens with matter and energy in individual organisms in the red units (Chemical Reactions through Photosynthesis).
In the meantime, please peruse the phenomenon, question, and description of the model below.
Phenomenon
Kelp forests are disappearing off the coast of California and around the world, replaced by "urchin barrens", an army of sea urchins covering expanses of the sea floor.
Question
What is causing this change? What are characteristics of healthy ecosystems and how do they get "out of balance"?
Model Ideas
In this unit, we build a model that characterizes healthy ecosystems and how Matter and Energy flow in a healthy ecosystem. We then apply that model to our urchin barren phenomenon to try and understand what has gone wrong and how we might help California kelp forests to recover.