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based on the second law of thermodynamics, how much biomass of phytoplankton would be needed to produce 11 kilogram (kgkg) of large fish in this food web?

Sagot :

Though the necessary food web image is missing, I believe you are referring to the image in which the large fish make up the third level of consumers. Therefore:

In order to achieve a population of 11kg of large fish, we would need much more than 11kg of phytoplankton biomass. This is due to one of the laws of thermodynamics.

These laws are;

  1. Conservation: Energy in an isolated system cannot be created or destroyed.
  2. Entropy is always increased in a system, and energy is lost as heat between each transfer.
  3. Entropy in a system will not change when temperature is at a critical low.

The second law of thermodynamics describes the loss of energy between each trophic level, and can be applied to food webs. On average, roughly 10% is lost between transfers of energy in a food web. In this food web, Large fish make up the 3rd level, meaning that there are three transfers of energy needed to reach the large fish.

This means that in order to achieve 11kg of large fish, we need to account for three 10% losses of energy. We will need 15kg of phytoplankton to begin with, which after all 3 losses of energy of 10% each will result in a biomass of 11kg in large fish.

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