Question

Explain marine and freshwater ecosystem?

Answer 1

The aquatic ecosystem is a water based environment where the organisms interact with both biotic and abiotic factors of the environment. It includes a marine or salty water environment and fresh water.

Complete answer:
To answer this question, we must know about the types of aquatic ecosystems.

The aquatic ecosystem is divided into two types
Fresh water ecosystem- Freshwater ecosystem covers 0.78% of earth’s surface. The net primary production from this ecosystem is around 3%. It contains around 41% of the world's known fishes. Fresh water includes lakes, ponds (called lentic), rivers, streams (called lotic), wetlands, swamps etc.
Several phytoplanktons and zooplanktons thrive in this region. Algae and small plants are the primary producers and the fishes and other freshwater organisms serve as consumers. The other organisms present are frogs, bugs, snails, beetles etc.

Marine ecosystem- It is the largest of all the ecosystems. It covers around 71% of the earth’s surface. This ecosystem is also water based but is different from fresh water due to the presence of dissolved salts like sodium and chlorine. The net primary production is around 32%. It includes the sea, oceans. It has a vast open surface which supports various flora and fauna like whales, sharks to small algae, dinoflagellates, corals, cephalopods, echinoderm and shark. The sea and ocean bed serves as perfect habitat for chemosynthetic sulphur bacteria which occurs in hydrothermal vents.

Note: The major threat to the marine ecosystem is overexploitation of marine resources for food and other valuable products like corals, pearl etc. Other sources of threat include pollution, climatic changes that affect the ecosystem to a great extent.