science vocab
Terms
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- updwelling
- ocean current that moves cold deep water to the ocean surface
- food chain
- series of stages that shows the transfer of energy from producers to concumers to decomposers
- salinity
- measure of dissolved solids or salts in sea water
- thermocline
- layer of ocean water that begins at a depth of about 200m and becomes colder as it gets deeper
- ecosystem
- community of organisms- producers consumers and decomposers - that interact with eachother and their surroundings
- photosynthesis
- in the ocean, the process in which organisms living in the upper 200m use sunlight, water and carbon dioxide to make food and oxygen
- producer
- organisms that can make its own food by photosynthesis or chemosynthesis
- wave
- rythmic disturbance that carries energy but not matter
- decomposer
- organism that breaks down the tissue and releases nutrients and carbon dioxide back into the ecosystem
- nekton
- marine mammals, such as fish and turtles that actively swim in ocean waters
- tide
- rythmic rise and fall in sealevel created by the gravitational attraction of earth and the moon or sun
- density current
- forms when more dense seawater sinks below less dense sea water
- surface current
- ocean current that usually moves the upper few hundreds of meters of seawater
- chemosynthesis
- process that occurs in deep ocean water were the sunlight doesnt reach in which bacteria make food dissolved sulfur compounds
- plankton
- tiny marine animals such as diatoms that drift in the surface waters of the ocean
- consumer
- organism that gets its energy from eating other organisms