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Water Biomes

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Water Biomes

The limiting factors in water biomes are:

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    • Amount of salt (salinity)
    • Amount of dissolved oxygen
    • Sunlight

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2 Types of Water Biomes

  • Freshwater
    • Rivers and Streams
    • Lakes and Ponds
  • Saltwater
    • Ocean
    • Estuaries
    • Seashores (tidal areas)

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Freshwater Biomes

Freshwater contains little or no salt, so it has a LOW salinity.

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Flowing freshwater = rivers and streams

Still Freshwater = lakes and ponds

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Flowing Freshwater

  • Streams
    • The faster a stream
    • flows the greater the
    • amount of dissolved
    • oxygen in it.

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Faster water flows = oxygen

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Flowing Freshwater

  • Streams
    • The fish that live in streams are adapted to fast moving water

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Flowing Freshwater

  • Rivers
    • Water moves slower

in a river and debris

settles on the bottom.

    • Because of this, rivers tend to have more nutrients and less dissolved oxygen.

nutrients and oxygen

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Flowing Freshwater

    • Rivers

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Freshwater

  • Ponds
    • Small, shallow bodies of water
    • Sunlight penetrates all the way to the bottom
    • Most completely filled with plant material
    • Very high amount of nutrients

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Freshwater

  • Ponds

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Freshwater

  • Lakes
    • Larger and deeper

than ponds

    • Plant growth is

limited to the shoreline

    • Sunlight does NOT

penetrate to the bottom= no plants

after a certain depth!

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Freshwater

  • Lakes

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Water Biomes

Plankton are microscopic algae, plants, and other organisms that float on the surface of water biomes.

They need sunlight to survive.

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Water Biomes

Phytoplankton are important producers in water biomes.

They are the first step in many aquatic food chains

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Saltwater Biomes

About 95% of the water on Earth has a high concentration of salt. (High salinity)

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Saltwater

  • Estuaries (Wetlands)
    • Area where a river meets an ocean
    • Mix of salt and freshwater
    • Located near coastlines, border land
    • Extremely fertile
    • Nutrient levels are higher than both salt and freshwater

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Saltwater

  • Estuaries
    • Chesapeake Bay
    • Pamlico Sound

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Saltwater

  • Seashores
    • Tides have a huge influence on life here
    • INTERTIDAL ZONE- portion of the shoreline that is covered with water at high tide and exposed to the air at low tide.

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Intertidal Zone

  • Can be sandy or rocky
  • Small fish, clams, crabs,

other mussels are

trapped in the

TIDAL POOLS during low tide

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Intertidal Zone

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Saltwater

  • Oceans
    • Can be divided into 2 main life zones
    • Photic zone- sunlight penetrates

Intertidal, Subtidal

2. Aphotic zone- NO sunlight

Bathyal, Abyssal & Hadal

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Photic Zone- above 200m

  • Made up of the intertidal & subtidal zones

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  • Sunlight penetrates

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  • Plant life and animal life is abundant

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Aphotic Zone- below 200m

  • Sunlight DOES NOT penetrate

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  • There are no plants

  • Animal life is highly specialized

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Aphotic Zone- below 200m

  • Many of the denizens of the deep ocean have a special adaptation known as bioluminescence

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YOU HAVE REACHED

THE END!