Functions of Ecosystem

An ecosystem does not just have structure — it actively functions, and that function boils down to three linked jobs: creating usable energy, transferring that energy from one organism to the next, and cycling the raw materials (nutrients) back and forth between the living community and its non-living surroundings. All of this ultimately traces back to a single starting point — the sunlight that reaches a producer's leaves and is converted, through photosynthesis, into the chemical energy that every other organism in the ecosystem eventually depends on. The sub-sections that follow work systematically through this chain of function: first how much of the incoming sunlight is actually usable and how productively it is converted into biomass, then how that biomass and its stored energy move through trophic levels, food chains, food webs and ecological pyramids, then how dead matter …