Understanding the Food Chain and Its Impact on the Environment, Essays (university) of Financial Accounting

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Running head: FOOD CHAIN 1 FOOD CHAIN Ashford University SCI 207: Our Dependence upon the Environment

A food chain is the transfer of energy in the form of food from organism to organism. In a typical food chain, you will have primary producers, primary consumers, secondary consumers, and tertiary consumers. The primary producers are at the bottom of the food chain, and tertiary consumers are reigning at the top. An example of a typical food chain grass (primary producer), grasshopper (primary consumer), frog (secondary consumer), and hawk (tertiary consumer). It is important to understand the way a food chain works because they reveal how each organism survives off one another. Food chains also display when problems occur, and producers or consumers are lost. Scientists can use the food chain to learn more about the ecosystem and help keep it balanced (Bandoim, 2019). A food chain affects living beings by helping regulate whatever ecosystem that living being is in. For humans, the food chain affects us by determining what we will consume, depending on the environment that we are in. Since humans are a tertiary consumer, their options for what they can consume is vast. However, if there is a problem in the food chain, it could affect the health of humans. For example, if humans continue to overfish, fewer and fewer species of fish will be available for consumption. Overfishing would also affectall of the other consumers in the marine food chain. The first action that we could take to promote environmental sustainability when it comes to the food chain is reducing plastic pollution. Worldwide it is estimated that there have been over 8.3 million metric tons of plastic produced since the 1950s. Only 9% of that plastic has been recycled, 12% incinerated, and 79% ending up in the environment. Plastics, when ingested by consumers, have harmful effects on health because of the chemical makeup of plastics. Eventually, when humans become the consumer, there are residual chemicals from the plastic consumed either by the primary or secondary consumer. Recycling and getting involved with

References Bandoim, L. (2019, June 26). Food Chain: Definition, Types, Importance & Examples (with Diagram). sciencing.com. Retrieved from https://sciencing.com/food-chain-definition- types-importance-examples-with-diagram-13719239.html Ederer, B., &Sluka, R. D. (2020). Plastics in the Food Chain. Perspectives on Science & Christian Faith , 72 (3), 167–175. Saha, B. (2019). Chance of extinction of populations in food chain model under demographic stochasticity. Mathematical Biosciences and Engineering : MBE , 16 (5), 3537–3560. https://doi-org.proxy-library.ashford.edu/10.3934/mbe.