Final answer:
The Net Primary Productivity (NPP) of a system is affected by various factors including temperature, moisture, light, nutrient availability, oxygen levels, and the ability to recycle nutrients and waste. Environmental factors like an increase in temperature can also have significant impacts on NPP.
Step-by-step explanation:
Factors that can affect the Net Primary Productivity (NPP) of a system include a variety of abiotic and biotic elements. NPP is the total amount of organic matter available as food in an ecosystem and is calculated by subtracting the carbon dioxide released during respiration from the total carbon fixed through photosynthesis. Aside from the significant impact of temperature and moisture, NPP is also influenced by light availability, nutrient availability, oxygen levels, and the ability of an ecosystem to recycle nutrients and waste. Additionally, factors such as disease, predation, wind, and space availability can limit the growth rate of plants and thus affect the NPP.
Light is essential for photosynthesis, and variations in light intensity can severely limit the rate at which plants produce biomass. Furthermore, water availability and nutrients like nitrogen and phosphorus are crucial for plant growth, and their scarcity can limit primary productivity. Environmental factors can also play a role, as with the potential increase in temperature leading to varied effects on ecosystem productivity. In aquatic systems, nutrient runoff from surrounding land can have significant consequences on primary productivity.
The Net Production Efficiency (NPE) is another important parameter that helps highlight how efficiently energy is incorporated into biomass within a trophic level. It takes into account energy lost to respiration and waste, as well as energy not ingested by consumers. Both NPP and NPE are vital in understanding the overall energy flow within an ecosystem and the factors that can limit it.