BRAINCAKEBiomass Transfer
Biomass is the mass of living material in an organism or a trophic level. It represents the chemical energy stored in organic compounds, so biomass transfer is also energy transfer.
Biomass is measured as dry mass, because the water content of living tissue varies. Organisms are dried at about 80 °C until their mass stops changing. This destroys them, so usually only a small sample is dried and the result scaled up. Biomass is given per unit area, for example g m−2, or per unit volume in water (g m−3). Measured over time, it becomes a rate, such as g m−2 yr−1. Energy can be found by burning a sample in a calorimeter (kJ m−2 yr−1).
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More in Ecosystems
- Biotic Factors
- Abiotic Factors
- Producers and Consumers
- Trophic Levels
- Ecological Efficiency
- Calculating Efficiency of Biomass Transfer
- Human Activities and Biomass Transfer
- Decomposers
All 21 lessons in Ecosystems · All OCR A-level Biology topics