Reflecting and consolidating

Chapter summary

• Governments are responding to demands by the public to manage resources sustainably.
• People have always used biomes for food, clothing and shelter.
• The impact people have on biomes varies from very little to major.
• Some so-called primitive people are able to manage their biomes quite sustainably.
• Population growth can be harmful to biomes.
• Some subsistence and commercial activities can almost completely remove the original biome.
• National parks are one way to preserve biomes for future generations.
• The public is becoming more aware of the need to manage biomes sustainably.
• Rice is a staple food for all Southeast Asian countries and is important for food and income security.
• Environmental factors, such as soil quality and variable rainfall, and human factors, such as competition for water resources and demand for urban land, are constraints on rice farming.
• An increasing preference for Western food has seen a decline in the consumption of rice in younger generations. However, high population growth has maintained demand for rice.

Interactive activity

Key terms

Short-answer questions

1. Describe how the sun affects an ecosystem on a daily basis.
2. Describe how the sun affects an ecosystem on an annual basis.
3. Define ‘food chain’.
4. Explain the relationships between the non-living and the living parts of an ecosystem.
5. Discuss how humans can have an impact on an ecosystem.

Extended-response question

This chapter has shown how people have changed some biomes from natural systems to systems completely dominated by humans. Write a newspaper article about how urban areas depend on rural and natural systems today. When writing your article, consider the following:

• that urban areas use food produced in rural areas
• the history of food production
• what urban areas would be like without rural food production
• the impacts of urbanisation on the economy, the environment and culture.