### natural phenomenon:

Food chain
* All food chains begin with a green plant
  - photosynthetic green plants or producers
  - sunlight
  - the energy sent to Earth from our nearest star, the Sun
* All food chains start with energy from the sun
* Many food chains are dependent upon the plant and invertebrate life of riparian areas
  - have no more than four or five trophic levels
* Most food chains are interconnected
  - begin with green plants which use solar energy to produce food
  - consist of producers, consumers, and decomposers
  - contain SIX or more trophic levels
* Most food chains start with green plants making food energy from the sun
  - photosynthesizers
* Some food chains share components.
* are a simple model and only show one pathway of energy and material transfer
  - interesting in any eco-system and the food chains in the ocean are many
* are just one possible way to transfer energy
  - specific feeding pathway, matching predator to prey all through the levels
  - made up of producers, consumers, and decomposers
  - needed to keep all organisms in balance
  - oversimplified and suggest that a consumer eats only a single food item
  - relatively uncomplicated, involving energy movement from one population to another
  - simplifications of complex relationships
  - snapshots in both space and time
  - the connection of hte energy between organisms
* are usually in a sequence, with an arrow used to show the flow of energy
  - longer in aquatic systems
* attempts to demonstrate the fate of an individual organism in a particular habitat.
  - energy that comes from plants
  - the sun, the source of all energy on earth
* can get complicated because animals usually eat a variety of food.
* connect to form what scientists call a food web.
* consist of four trophic levels
* depicts the different organisms that are connected in an ecosystem.
* describe how energy is transferred from one organism in an ecosystem to another
  - the feeding relationships between plants and animals
  - what is eaten by whom in nature
* end with top predators, animals that have little or no natural enemies.
* follow the first and second laws of thermodynamics.
* have three types of organisms.
* indicate who eats whom in an ecosystem.
* is part of food web
  - the event of eating and being eaten in a certain order and direction
  - when smaller animals or plants get eaten by big or meat eaters
* natural phenomenon
* process of one organism eating the other and being eaten by another organism.
* provide a visual example of how energy is transferred throughout the universe.
* range from very simple to very complex.
* refers to a process cycle from producer to consumer to decomposer.
* represent the greatest interdependency within the webs of life.
* seem to follow a small to large size progression.
* show energy transfer between organisms.
* show how matter and energy move through an ecosystem
  - organisms feed on one another
  - just consumers, but food webs also show producers
  - one way living things depend on each other
  - only one path of food and energy through an ecosystem
* show the feeding relationships between living things
  - order in which animals consume food
  - transfer of energy from the sun to producers to consumers and to decomposers
* start with a producer and end with a consumer.
* trace the transfer of energy from one organism to another in an ecosystem.
* track the transfer of energy and inorganic nutrients from one organism to another.
* transfer energy from one trophic level to another.
* vary in length from three to six or more levels.

Inundation
* is floodwater and debris flowing through an area
  - the best method to rise the water level permanent to the surface
* natural phenomenon