Gross Primary Production (A-level Biology)

Gross Primary Production

Gross Primary Production

Understanding GPP

Gross primary production (GPP) is the amount of chemical energy which is created from light energy in a given amount of time. The units are mass / area / time – mass of carbon per unit area per year (g C m−2 yr−1) is the most common unit.

If a plant photosynthesises a lot, then GPP will be very high because lots of chemical energy is being produced from photosynthesis.

We will go on to look at how GPP can be used to calculate another value, known as the net primary production (NPP), in the next section.

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