Question

You are studying plant physiology and want to compare the energy used during cellular respiration for plants in tundras at varying longitudes. However, you do not have the funding to travel to multiple tundras and actually measure plant respiration. Instead, you decide to gather previously published data in order to arrive at an accurate average.You find very few data on plant respiration in tundra, but lots of data on their gross primary production. What would be the most logical next step towards estimating the energy used in cellular respiration?

Answer 1

Answer:

Find Net Primary Production of tundra plants

Explanation:

Gross primary production (GPP) is the total amount of energy traped from the sunlight. It is a chemical energy that plants (primary producers) create as a biomass. One part of this energy is used for the process of cellular respiration, while the rest is known as net primary production (NPP). NPP is the measure of energy gain in plants or the rate at which the plants produce useful energy. It can be calculated:

NPP = GPP - cellular respiration

Simply saying, NPP is the difference between total trapped carbon (from the photosynthesis) and carbon that is lost (through the cellular respiration).