The one way in which energy flows differ from chemical cycling is that Energy flow is unidirectional; chemical elements can be recycled. The correct answer is c.
Chemicals in a particular ecosystem remain in that ecosystem. It moves from one organism to another. In a case an organism dies, the decomposers recycled its chemicals back into the ecosystem.
This is mostly referred to as cycle of life. In the ecosystem, chemicals move in a pattern that is circular, by moving from the producer to consumer, to the decomposer and back to the producer.
In the ecosystem, energy flows in one direction. Primary producers such as plant, phytoplankton use solar energy from the sun and passed it to the consumers and eventually the composers.
In the ecosystem, energy cannot be recycled. The energy cannot get back to the producers; they have to always get new energy from the sun. Approximately 10% of the energy they make from the sun is passed to the next trophic level and they lose some of the energy as heat.
However, trophic level refers to the position an organisms occupies in the food chain. A food chain can as well be defined as the series of organisms that feed on other organism and can as well eat themselves.
The producers such as algae, plants are the first trophic level while the herbivores that feed on plant are second on the trophic level. The ecosystem determines whether the trophic level will get to third or fourth.
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