EXERCISE NO.

MEASUREMENT OF PRODUCTIVITY

COURSE TITLE: ENS 53 (TERRESTRIAL ECOLOGY)

LAB PROFESSOR: JOSE HERMIS P. PATRICIO, PhD

DATE PERFORMED: SEPTEMBER 20 – OCTOBER 11, 2019

DATE SUBMITTED: OCTOBER 25, 2019

GROUP NO: 3

NAME OF STUDENT: DAGALA, VANICHIE YAFFA

MEMBERS:

CABALUNA, MELLANIE

DAUMAR, MARINELA

DELA CRUZ, KESCUIA PEARL

MALERIADO, ALYANNA
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ABSTRACT

The rate of biomass production is called productivity. The portion of fixed

energy, a trophic level passes on to the next trophic level is called
production.Productivity in ecosystems is of two kinds, i.e., primary and secondary.
Green plants fix solar energy and accumulate it in organic forms as chemical energy.
As this is the first and basic form of energy storage, the rate at which the energy
accumulates in the green plants or producers is known as primary productivity.

The lab exercise was conducted for the students to be exposed to the harvest
method for estimating productivity in a grassland ecosystem. It is a productivity
measuring technique, most commonly used for estimates of primary productivity,
especially in situations in which predation is low (e.g. among annual crops, on
certain heathlands, in colonizing grasslands, and sometimes in pond ecosystems).
Sample areas are harvested at intervals throughout the growing season, and the
material is dried to estimate dry weight or calorific value.

Sustainable use of an ecosystem relies on not using resources faster than they
are made. Productivity relies on the diversity of the ecosystem to ensure efficient
cycling of resources, and loss of diversity lowers ecosystem productivity.
Unsustainable use of resources feeds back on itself and the ecosystem loses
productivity, and less can be taken from the ecosystem in the long term.

INTRODUCTION

In ecology, productivity is the rate at which energy is added to the bodies of

organisms in the form of biomass. Biomass is simply the amount of matter that's stored
in the bodies of a group of organisms. Productivity can be defined for any trophic level
or other group, and it may take units of either energy or biomass. There are two basic
types of productivity: gross and net.

Gross primary productivity, or GPP, is the rate at which solar energy is captured
in sugar molecules during photosynthesis (energy captured per unit area per unit
time). Producers such as plants use some of this energy for metabolism/cellular
respiration and some for growth (building tissues). Net primary productivity, or NPP, is
gross primary productivity minus the rate of energy loss to metabolism and
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maintenance. In other words, it's the rate at which energy is stored as biomass by
plants or other primary producers and made available to the consumers in the
ecosystem.

To observe the above concept, a lab exercise was conducted for the students
to be exposed to the harvest method for estimating productivity in a grassland
ecosystem.

MATERIALS AND METHODS

I. Materials

The materials used in the experiment were as follows: four square quadrats,
glass clippers, scissors, guna or bolo-guna (weeding knife), straw, measuring tape,
sticks, rice sack, paper bag, and weighing scale.

II. Procedure

During this particular experiment, a specific study site with uniform vegetation
was selected. Within the study site, a wide area where the vegetation is of almost
uniform growth or size was chosen. In the chosen area, 4 m 2 quadrats were laid out
side by side. At the borders of each quadrat, the standing vegetation were parted so
that all of the stems rooted in the quadrat were inside the boundary markers. Then, all
of the recent dead material including individual leaves and entire plants from the first
quadrat were removed. All the dead materials were placed on a sack labeled “Dead”.
Then, all standing leaves and stems were clipped as close to the ground as possible
and placed into a sack labeled “Live”. Lastly, all the roots from the first quadrat were
removed and placed into a sack labeled “Roots”. Then the roots and live and dead
materials were weighed daily until the weight was constant. The different plant species
were identified. The following procedures was repeated for the rest of the quadrats. In
order to get the primary productivity, the harvest method was used.

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

The recorded weight of the live and dead materials and roots are shown at the
table below. Each week live and dead materials and roots were gathered from one of
the 4 plots or quadrat.
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Table 1. Recorded weight of the live and dead materials and roots

DAY ROOTS, g LIVE, g DEAD, g

PLOT 1
1 21. 4 g 144.1 g 13.6 g
2 21. 0 g 142.0 g 13.6 g
3 21. 0 g 140.0 g -
4 - 140.0 g -
PLOT 2
1 50.0 g 150.0 g 30.0 g
2 50.0 g 148.0 g 28.0 g
3 - 148.0 g 28.0 g
4 - - -
PLOT 3
1 59.0 g 171.0 g 50.0 g
2 56.0 g 168.0 g 50. 0 g
3 56.0 g 168.0 g -
4 - - -
PLOT 4
1 70. 0 g 204.0 g 58.0 g
2 69.0 g 202.0 g 56.0 g
3 69.0 g 202.0 g 56.0 g
4 - - -

The table above shows that the weight recorded was not immediately constant,
for four days the live and dead materials and roots were repeatedly weighed until its
weight remained constant.

Table 2. Results of the terrestrial primary productivity

PERIOD PRIMARY PRODUCTIVITY, g/m2 PRODUCTIVITY, g/m2/wk

Week 1 43.65 g/m2 10.9 g/m2/wk
Week 2 56.5 g/m2 14.13 g/m2/wk
Week 3 68.5 g/m2 17.13 g/m2/wk
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Week 4 81.75 g/m2 20.44 g/m2/wk

Average 62.6 g/m2 15.65 g/m2/wk

The following plant species were found during the lab exercise: Mimosa pudica
/makahiya, Asthma weed/Tawa-tawa, Velvetleaf, Paspalum distichum L. (Bakbaka),
Amaranth. Majority of the weed collected was the Paspalum distichum L. (Bakbaka),
it made up 80% of the weighed species. To get the primary productivity, the harvest
method was used. It is a productivity measuring technique, most commonly used for
estimates of primary productivity, especially in situations in which predation is low (e.g.
among annual crops, on certain heathlands, in colonizing grasslands, and sometimes
in pond ecosystems). Sample areas are harvested at intervals throughout the growing
season, and the material is dried to estimate dry weight or calorific value. The table
above shows that the average primary productivity is 62.6 g/m2, this indicates that area
selected doesn’t produce as much as the other areas in the selected location. It is
because the largeness of primary productivity depends on the photosynthetic capacity
of producers and the existing environmental conditions, such as solar radiation,
temperature and soil moisture. In the data collected, it can be seen that the productivity
increases per week. The reason may be because the other plots have gotten time to
grow and produce more unlike the first plot that was used for the lab exercise.

Producers are autotrophs, or "self-feeding" organisms, that make their own

organic molecules from carbon dioxide. Photoautotrophs like plants use light energy
to build sugars out of carbon dioxide. The energy is stored in the chemical bonds of
the molecules, which are used as fuel and building material by the plant.

The energy stored in organic molecules can be passed to other organisms in

the ecosystem when those organisms eat plants (or eat other organisms that have
previously eaten plants). In this way, all the consumers, or heterotrophs ("other-
feeding" organisms) of an ecosystem, including herbivores, carnivores, and
decomposers, rely on the ecosystem's producers for energy.

If the plants or other producers of an ecosystem were removed, there would be

no way for energy to enter the food web, and the ecological community would collapse.
That's because energy isn't recycled: instead, it's dissipated as heat as it moves
through the ecosystem, and must be constantly replenished.
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Because producers support all the other organisms in an ecosystem, producer

abundance, biomass (dry weight), and rate of energy capture are key in understanding
how energy moves through an ecosystem and what types and numbers of other
organisms it can sustain.

Plants typically capture and convert about 1.3 - 1.6% of the solar energy that
reaches Earth's surface and use about a quarter of the captured energy for metabolism
and maintenance. So, around 1% of the solar energy reaching Earth's surface (per
unit area and time) ends up as net primary productivity. Net primary productivity varies
among ecosystems and depends on many factors. These include solar energy input,
temperature and moisture levels, carbon dioxide levels, nutrient availability, and
community interactions (e.g., grazing by herbivores). These factors affect how many
photosynthesizers are present to capture light energy and how efficiently they can
perform their role. In terrestrial ecosystems, primary productivity ranges from
about 2000 g/m2/yr in highly productive tropical forests and salt marshes to less
than 100 g/m2/yr in some deserts.

CONCLUSION

Ecosystem ecologists have long been interested in quantifying and

understanding what controls terrestrial primary production. While gross primary
production (GPP) is the total influx of carbon into an ecosystem through the
photosynthetic fixation of CO2, net primary production (NPP) is this gross carbon influx
discounted for plant respiratory costs of growth and maintenance. Net primary
production forms the base of ecological food chains and is heavily manipulated by
humans in the production of food, fiber, wood, and increasingly biofuels. Climate,
disturbance, and ecological succession exert influences on terrestrial NPP and GPP,
suggesting that mounting anthropogenic influences on global climate and land-use will
have substantial effects on the future primary production of terrestrial ecosystems.

Sustainable use of an ecosystem relies on not using resources faster than they
are made. Productivity relies on the diversity of the ecosystem to ensure efficient
cycling of resources, and loss of diversity lowers ecosystem productivity.
Unsustainable use of resources feeds back on itself and the ecosystem loses
productivity, and less can be taken from the ecosystem in the long term.

GUIDE QUESTIONS
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1.) What physical factors make an ecosystem highly productive?

In ecology, productivity refers to the rate of generation of biomass in

an ecosystem. It is usually expressed in units of mass per unit surface (or volume) per
unit time, for instance grams per square meter per day (g m−2 d−1). A high primary
productivity rate in the ecosystems is obtained when the physical factors (for instance:
water, nutrients and climate) are favorable. The presence of some forms of secondary
energy can also help to increase the primary productivity rate. An example is that of
estuaries, one of the most productive ecosystems in the world. In estuaries, freshwater
encounters seawater. The plants that live there form a wide photosynthetic carpet.
Trunks and roots trap large amounts of food particles and, once their vital cycle is over,
they decompose, thus supplying the ecosystem with more organic matter. Here,
secondary energy is provided by the effect of tides, that on one side promotes the fast
flow of nutrients and on the other side promotes the disposal of the produced waste,
so that the organisms that live there (sea bass, gilthead, mullet, clam larvae) do not
spend energy to find food or dispose of waste and can grow more quickly.

2.) List in detail the ways in which the net primary productivity is lost from the plants
and which therefore, cause the ANP value to be low.

The plant net primary production (NPP) is an important indicator to reflect the
function of the grassland ecosystems. Some research results are reviewed about the
effects of plant species diversity, resource availability, grazing, restoration of degraded
grassland and climate change on NPP of grassland ecosystems in the paper. These
researches show that (1) there are inconsistent conclusions about the relationship
between plant diversity and NPP which depends on experimental site, starting status
and indicators measured; most of the studies find their “single peak relationship due
to compensation effect of different plant resource utilization niche. However, some
studies report that they are positive and negative relationships when NPP is relatively
low and high, respectively. there are many mechanisms to explain their negative
correlations including the hypotheses of disturbance, competition and resources
availability. (2) Resource availability determines NPP and modifies the relationship
between it and plant diversity. Some researches show that there is an interactive effect
on NPP between different resources. Improving the level of a limiting resource may
reduce its use efficiency, but it may improve the use efficiency of other resources.
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Nutrient additions improve the productivity of the grassland, while it reduces plant
diversity. (3) Grazing affects NPP through changing plant composition and resource
availability. Heavy grazing reduces soil nitrogen (N) mineralization rate and NPP, while
moderate grazing increases them. In particular, moderate grazing enhances plant
diversity due to increase of grassland heterogeneity. (4) Availability of nutrient
resources and feedback of plants to it play key roles on NPP in the restoration of
degraded grasslands. With the increasing of root biomass, root C/N ratio and the
amount of microbial C and soil carbon pool, the net N mineralization rates and N
bioavailability rapidly decline during the processes of the restoration. Plant-soil
interaction manifestes as negative feedback, which in turn limites the further
improvement of plant productivity. NPP may increase with restoration of the degraded
grasslands, whereas maximum NPP occurs in the middle or late stages of the
restoration. NPP will decline at the late stage of the restoration if there is no
disturbance or grazing.(5) Most of experimental warming studies show that there are
inconsistent effects of warming on NPP and plant diversity which varies with the
different locations and grassland ecosystems due to differences of resource
availability and grazing/clipping. In general, the impacts of warming on underground
NPP is larger than on aboveground NPP.

3.) List down and describe very briefly some other methods used by ecologists to
estimate productivity in terrestrial ecosystem.

The primary production of an ecosystem can be measured by following

methods: (1) O2 Productions or Light and Dark Bottle Method: The light-and-dark-
bottle method, commonly used in aquatic environments, is based on the assumption
that the amount of oxygen produced is proportional to gross production, since one
molecule of oxygen is produced for each atom of carbon fixed; (2) Carbon Dioxide
Assimilation: This method is suitable for estimation of production of trees trial
ecosystems. It involves the measurement of the uptake of carbon dioxide and its
release in respiration; (3) Chlorophyll Method: An estimate of the production of some
ecosystems (e.g., aquatic ecosystems) can be obtained from chlorophyll and light
data. This method involves the determination of chlorophyll-a content of the plant per
gram or per square meter, which under reasonably favorable conditions is the same;
(4) Radioactive Tracers Method: The most recent method of determining production
involves the measurement of the rate of up take of radioactive carbon (14C) by plants.
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It is a most sensitive method to measure net photosynthesis under field conditions.

This method involves the- addition of a quantity of radioactive carbon as a carbonate
(14COs) to a sample of water containing its natural phytoplankton population. After a
short period of time, to allow photosynthesis to take place, the plankton material is
strained from the water, washed, and dried. Then radioactive counts are taken, and
from them calculations are made to estimate the amount of carbon dioxide fixed in
photosynthesis.

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Biology, 8th ed., 1222-1244. San Francisco: Benjamin Cummings, 2008.

Kimball, John W. "Ecosystem Productivity." Kimball's Biology Pages. Last modified

February 25,
2011. http://users.rcn.com/jkimball.ma.ultranet/BiologyPages/N/NetProductivity.html.

Valiela, Ivan. "Factors Affecting Primary Production." In Marine Ecological Processes,

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Wang, C. & Meng, Fandong & Li, Xin-E & Jiang, Lili & Wang, Shiping. (2014). Factors
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