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disturbances events such as fire, floods, droughts, overgrazing, or human activity that damage biological communities, remove organisms, and alter the availability of resourses ecological succesion when a disturbed area is gradually replaced by a succession of other species primary succession when no ecological succession begins in a virtually lifeless area with no soil secondary succession where a disturbance destroys an existing community but left the soil intact food chain the sequence of food transfer up the trophic levels producers bottom of the foodchain (autotrophs) primary consumers herbivores which eat plants (insects birds) secondary consumers small mammals (mouse) tertiary consumers animals that eat secondary consumers (snakes) quaternary these include hawks and are the highest level of the food chain detritivores/ decomposers get energy from detritus detritus dead animal matter produced at all trophic levels decompostiton the breakdown of organic materials to inorganic ones food web a network of interconnecting food chains ecosystem all the organisims in a community as well as the abiotic energy flow the passage of energy through the components of the ecosystem chemical cycling the transfer of materials within the ecosystem biomass the amount of living organic material in an ecolsystem primary production the amount of solar energy converted to chemical energy by producers for a given area in a given time period biogeochemical ecosystems involving biotic and abiotic abiotic resevoir chemical nutrients is stockpiled