Coal mining limiting Factors
ByCoal mining blog three limiting factors
Research some of the limiting factors that impact your chosen ecosystem concern. Your ecological issue will impact some populations in your ecosystem. Create a blog post describing the effect of human activity on the limiting factors and how they impact the carrying capacity for some living things in your ecosystem.
Human activity related to the ecological issue associated with coal mining can directly impact the populations in the ecosystem.
Coal mining affects the ecosystem by influencing the limiting factors: food, oxygen, and water.
Since coal is mostly made of carbon, it reacts with oxygen in the air when burned to produce carbon dioxide. Due to this reaction, there is more carbon dioxide and less oxygen avaible in the ecosystem. This can affect species living in the ecosystem as there is less oxygen in the air to be consumed by organisms that rely on consuming oxygen. If oxygen levels are too low, then the bodies of organisms will not function properly, and this can have a rippling effect on other organisms in the ecosystem. Materials produced from coal farming react with components of water and oxygen and cause pollution in the water. Pollution in the water can cause acidic water in the ecosystem, which contains harmful heavy metals. Organisms in the ecosystem will be affected by this water pollution as consuming high levels of this water will negatively impact the functioning of their systems and possibly cause death. For example, if the pH of the water is too high or too low, then the fish in the water will die. Too high or too low pH can also affect the toxicity and solubility of the pollutant chemicals and heavy metals in the water, which are consumed by the aquatic organisms. Lastly, food will be impacted by the coal farming. Since pollutants can negatively impact the organisms in the ecosystem, other organisms can be affected by the decrease in a directly affected organism population. If an organism that is lower on the food chain is negatively impacted by the pollution, then this could decrease the population of that organism and also decrease the population of the predators. For example, if the krill are negatively impacted by the pollutants and suffer from a population decrease, then the fish that eat the krill will also suffer a population decrease because the krill are the fish’s food.
All these limiting factors can impact the carrying capacity as the populations of these organisms will decrease and possibly lower the carrying capacity in the ecosystem as limiting factors are what determine the carrying capacity.
These images show how coal mining can really effect us
By: Rocco