C890 Task2 PDF

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The hydrologic cycle is relatively easy to understand. The sun, an abiotic factor, heats water that is found in the biosphere, which is made up of the geosphere, the atmosphere and the hydrosphere. The process of heating water found in the biosphere is known as evaporation. Once water is evaporated it is cooled and condensed into droplets, forming clouds, in earth’s atmosphere. The abiotic clouds eventually release the moisture in a process called reprecipitation in the form of abiotic factors such as hail, snow, rain, sleet, etc. The reshaped water then enters the geosphere through the collecting of ground water where it becomes surface runoff. This water flows into larger bodies of water where is can then be evaporated by the sun and begins the hydrologic cycle again. Water that is not evaporated right away can seep into the upper layers of the ground and can be sued to nourish plants, which are biotic factors of the Earth.

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Carbon is a foundational, perhaps the single most important, ingredient that makes up many of the essentials to life such as carbohydrates, fats, proteins and DNA. The Earth’s Carbon Cycle is the biogeochemical exchange of carbon between the earth’s five spheres. Various compounds of carbon circulate through the biosphere, the atmosphere, and parts of the hydrosphere, in a cycle known as “the carbon cycle”. The Earth’s atmosphere holds carbon mostly in the form of carbon dioxide. Through the process of photosynthesis, carbon dioxide is absorbed from the air (abiotic factor) and is used as food for plants and trees (biotic factors), who

we will refer to as “producers”, in the Earth’ s geosphere. The producers return carbon dioxide to the Earth is the form of carbon. When animals, who we will refer to as “consumers”, who live in the geosphere consume those producers the carbon is transferred to them, and so and so on. The carbon is transferred to the soil when consumers die, or back into the atmospheres through the respiration process, in the form of carbon dioxide, which is then, again, consumed by the producers. Carbon can be held in rocks or fossils for a very long time, creating fossil fuels, which release the carbon when they are eventually burned. The human interaction when we choose to burn fossil fuels omits an unbalanced amount of carbon dioxide and is a huge contributing factor to the rapid increase of pollution in the Earth’s atmosphere. We also pollute the Earth through participating in the process of deforestation. When we cause forest fires, we are releasing carbon dioxide from trees and plants before they have an opportunity to transfer it into carbon, again polluting the Earth. Carbon enters the ocean and other bodies of water, which is a part of Earth’s hydrosphere, through a process known as diffusion, where it transformed into carbon dioxide and can be used to nourish organisms such as plankton (consumers) through a process known as photosynthesis, exactly like plants and trees. The carbon absorbed by the plankton can be transferred up the food chain, eventually ending up in rocks once an organism dies and becomes fossilized, much like what happens in the geosphere. Carbon moves from water to land in a reverse process we still refer to as diffusion.

("MindTap - Cengage Learning") Nitrogen, just like carbon and water, is an essential ingredient all life forms require in order to survive. Pure nitrogen cannot be used by plants, which we said earlier are biotic factors of the Earth. A nitrogen atom has to be paired with ammonium creating ammonium or turned into an ammonium or nitrate ion. In the atmospheres, these nitrogen compounds can be created by lightning, an abiotic factor, which converts N2 into NH3. Special bacteria, found in soil on Earth’s geosphere, also can convert N2 into NH3. Once pure nitrogen is converted into one of the new compounds it is then absorbed by plant roots. The plants then produce proteins and essential vitamins from the nitrogen compounds that is then consumed by and transferred to other animals. Bacteria found in the hydrosphere has the ability to convert nitrogen compounds into nitrogen gas, which is then released back to the atmosphere and he cycle begins again.

( "MindTap - Cengage Learning") Phosphorus, like the others, is a very important nutrient that supports life. This is the slowest of the four cycles described as it is gaseous. Phosphorous is mostly held in abiotic phosphate rocks, found on Earth’ geosphere, that contain an abundance of phosphate ions, which like nitrogen is very important to plant growth. When water moves over these phosphate rocks it slowly erodes them, causing phosphate to be carried in the water and is then consumed by biotic factors such as plants and animals. The plants are then consumed by other organisms and the phosphate compounds are transferred along the food chain. When water containing phosphate, compounds is washed into Earth’s hydrosphere. Once in the hydrosphere it can lay trapped in sediment or rocks for a very long time. The movement of plate tectonics causes the rocks and sediments to move, eventually releasing the phosphate compounds back into the water. Once freed it can begin to reenter the begging of its cycle.

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(National Geographic Society 2018)

The photo above shows a simplified version of a food web for a deep sea, possibly coral reef, marine ecosystem. You can see 11 organisms and the 4 trophic levels involved within the ecosystem. The four trophic levels shown here are producers, herbivores called primary consumers, carnivores called secondary consumers, and tertiary consumers that eat other carnivores are place into the top predators trophic level The food web begins with seagrass, which are producers (plants are producers), that are consumed by Atlantic blue tangs, which are fist consumers because they are herbivores. Atlantic blue tangs are consumed by the yellow-tail snapper fish, which is a secondary consumer because it is a carnivore that consumes primary consumers. The yellow-tail snapper is consumed by grey reef sharks which are territory predators and fall within top predators’ trophic level because the consume all other carnivores. Carbon within this web moves from producers who take in carbon dioxide, turn it into carbon and are then consumed by the next trophic level, who uses the food as energy, and is eventually

consumed by the next highest trophic level. The process continues all the way to the top of the food web, until we get to the top predators, in the instance the gray reef shark. The shark gets the carbon from the snapper by eating it. The snapper got his carbon by eating the tang. The tang got the carbon from eating the seagrass, who got their carbon from the process of photosynthesis. Human activity has a huge effect on the biodiversity of a food web. Two good examples are ocean pollution such as plastics and oil, and the effect that over has on the fish population. When our oceans become polluted from plastics and oils the chain of negative events is easy to see. When sea grass is unable to grow due to pollution, we see a decline in the population of blue tangs, who depend on the sea grass to survive. While the population of blue tangs begins to fall, is has a negative impact on the growth and repopulation of secondary consumers who eat fish like the blue tangs. When the secondary consumers of a marine ecosystem begin to die off, we can only expect to see a decline in the growth of the top predators like the gray reef shark. So as only level of the food web is disturbed is creates a chain reaction of negative effects that begin to affect each trophic level and every organism within that ecosystem’s web. The same time of chain reaction happens when we overfish our marine ecosystems. The rapid decrease of one organism has a negative impact, in one way or another, on a different organism within that same ecosystem. While overfishing might not directly affect the seagrass, it does cause issues for the secondary and tertiary trophic level when the resources become scarce due to increased competition for food, caused by humans.

Works Cited

MindTap - Cengage Learning.engage.com/static/nb/ui/evo/index.html? eISBN=9781337112475&id=206840611&nbId=570920&snapshotId=570920&.

National Geographic Society. “Marine Food Pyramid.” National Geographic Society, 11 Mar. 2018, www.nationalgeographic.org/photo/marine-food-pyramid-1/....