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Calorimetry in Ecology: Znstitut Fir Biochemie Und Molekulare Biologie, Technische Universitiit Berlin (Germany)

This document discusses how calorimetry can be used to study ecosystems by measuring the heat released by organisms and their environments. It describes how microcalorimetry and bomb calorimetry have been applied to investigate various ecosystems including soils, plants, animals, and microbial populations under different conditions. Examples of applications in areas like waste water treatment and biomass conversion are also mentioned.

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Stephanie Love T. Baring
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11 views1 page

Calorimetry in Ecology: Znstitut Fir Biochemie Und Molekulare Biologie, Technische Universitiit Berlin (Germany)

This document discusses how calorimetry can be used to study ecosystems by measuring the heat released by organisms and their environments. It describes how microcalorimetry and bomb calorimetry have been applied to investigate various ecosystems including soils, plants, animals, and microbial populations under different conditions. Examples of applications in areas like waste water treatment and biomass conversion are also mentioned.

Uploaded by

Stephanie Love T. Baring
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© © All Rights Reserved
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Z%wmocfzimicu Acru, 193 (1991) 107-124 107

Elsevier Science Publishers B.V., Amsterdam

Calorimetry in ecology

Ursula Reh
Znstitutfir Biochemie und Molekulare Biologie, Technische Universitiit Berlin (Germany)
(Received 18 december 1990)

INTRODUCTION

“Though the organisms may claim our primary interest, when we


are trying to think fundamentally we cannot separate them from
their special environment, with which they form one physical
system” (quoted by Chapman [l]).

In this way, Sir A. Tensley formulated the interest in the new field of
“Ecosystems” in 1935.
In a thermodynamic sense, organisms or populations are open systems
exchanging matter, energy and information with their environment. These
activities are in all cases connected with a flow of heat, because the Second
Law of Thermodynamics requires a decrease of order in the whole system,
i.e. organisms plus environment. Thus, life as a metabolic process creating
order must be connected with reactions imposing increasing disorder on
the system.
Heat directly related to the enthalpy change (AH) may be measured by
calorimetry. Energy bound in organic matter by metabolic processes can be
determined as heat Q by combustion calorimetry and DSC. Thus, the
combination of these three calorimetric methods makes it possible to
calculate the total energy flow through an ecosystem.
Microcalorimetry as well as bomb calorimetry are well established meth-
ods in all branches of ecology. Ecosystems of soil or water, of plants and
animals, of special fauna1 and floral populations, of life and particularly
microbial life at different temperatures, with different nutritional and
oxygen supplies or at different geographic gradients or elevations have
been investigated.
The ecological aspects of the microbial production of drugs and the
decomposition of xenobiotic pollutants, of waste water treatment and of
conversion of renewable biomass into fuels are mentioned as examples
from publications of the last ten years.

SCOPE OF CALORIMETRIC INVESTIGATIONS

In the following sections, calorimetric experiments on the various parts


of an ecosystem are described, starting with soil and its different con-

0040-6031/91/$03.50 0 1991 - Elsevier Science Publishers B.V. All rights reserved

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