topic : assignment
A• Below are the latitude/longitude co-ordinates
for four locations on planet Earth
• Find each of these locations in Google Earth (or
Google maps w/satellite images turned on if you don’t have Google Earth
already
installed) and zoom in so that you can see about a 100 x 100 km area
o Boreal forest (western Newfoundland, Canada):
49 49 13 N 57 11 47 W
o Farmland/Forest (Yunnan Province, PR China):
25 07 06 N 103 09 42 E
o Tropical forest (Chiquibl, Belize, Central
America):
16 47 44 N 89 03 11 W
o Coral Reef (Australia):
20 37 35 S 150 27 57 E
• In-class assignment:
• Answer the following questions
about each of the four locations:
Person A – Boreal,
Person B: Farmland,
Person C: Tropical Forest,
Person D: Coral Reef.
o Examine each location at three scales (maximum
extents) –
1: about 100-500 km; 2: about 10 km; 3: about 1
km
o Briefly describe the dominant pattern at each
scale
What is the ‘grain’ of the dominant pattern (the
smallest size of objects)
What is the ‘extent ‘of that pattern (the
largest size)?
What does it look like?
o What are the dominant objects you observe that
make up the pattern?
o Draw a Stommel diagram of the system (combining
all three scales)
Consider
• Scale
o Temporal (minimum and maximum time duration)
o Spatial (finest and broadest)
• Processes
o List at least two ecological processes
(interactions between abiotic and biotic parts of the system) that are
likely present
at each of the three scales;
• Decide on two things that are
similar across the four systems. One should be related to pattern, and
one to
underlying processes.
• Write a short (one paragraph) description of
those similarities.