What makes the flow of energy through an ecosystem different from the flow of water and other nutrients and direction of flow of energy in an ecosystem?
Chemical nutrients and energy tend to flow in the same direction for most of an ecosystem, but the main difference is that the nutrient cycle is recycled in the ecosystem while the energy flow is ultimately lost from the ecosystem to the universe at large. In the ecosystem, energy comes from the sun. Dead producers and consumers and their waste products provide matter and energy to decomposers. Decomposers transform matter back into inorganic forms that can be recycled within the ecosystem. So, the energy that enters an ecosystem as sunlight eventually flows out of the ecosystem in the form of heat.The flow of energy in the ecosystem is unidirectional. The energy enters the plants through photosynthesis during the making of food. This energy is then passed on to the successive trophic levels in a food chain is only 10% and rest energy gets lost as heat during transfer and life process.
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