Answer to Question 1
Periodic fire will favor some species over others, just like any other abiotic limiting factor. Grassland and pine forests are ecosystems that depend upon fire. Fire is being increasingly used as a tool in the management of grasslands and pine forests. In pine forests, if ground fires occur every few years, relatively little deadwood accumulates. With only small amounts of fuel, fires usually just burn along the ground, harming neither pines nor wildlife significantly. In forests where fires have not occurred for many decades, however, deadwood accumulates and if a fire does break out, it will almost certainly become disastrous.
Answer to Question 2
The four ways of converting biomass to useful energy are burning of firewood, municipal wastepaper, and other organic waste; generating methane from anaerobic digestion of manure and sewage sludge; and producing alcohol from fermenting grains and other starchy materials.
The environmental impact from burning firewood is deforestation. The environmental consequences from burning municipal wastepaper is that the paper could be recycled (saving resources and more energy than can be obtained from burning) and the potential for dioxin production if the temperatures are not high enough. Generating methane from manure and sewage sludge would be problematic if methane is released prior to its use (potent greenhouse gas), and metals in sewage sludge might be problematic. Producing alcohol from fermenting grains has all the problems associated with farming, plus it diverts farmland from food production.
Ecological features of fungi can be harnessed in biotechnology.
An ecological puzzle solved.
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