biogeochemical cycles

• self - regulating

  • Sources and sinks (reservoir) 

Water (salt water → oceans; fresh water → glaciers, groundwater)

Carbon: forest, oceans

Nitrogen: atmosphere

Phosphorus: rocks, geosphere & lithosphere

Biosphere: living things

Atmosphere: nitrogen and other gasses

Hydrosphere: water

Geosphere and lithosphere: rocks

WATER CYCLE

Movement of water in its various solid, liquid, and gaseous phases

Human activity actively disrupts cycles (climate change, pollution)

Essential to life

Processes driven by sun

Evaporation - liquid → gas

Evapotranspiration - water comes out of plant stomata in vapor form

Sublimation: water from a solid to a gaseous state

Water can collect in solids (glaciers)

Water moving from the atmosphere: precipitation, dew, and fog drip

Surface runoff and snowmelt halp return water to rivers and freshwater lakes

Runoff - anytime precipitation falls and that area cannot absorb it

CARBON CYCLE

Remember photosynthesis (out of atmosphere) equation and respiration (into atmosphere) equation (main methods of carbon moving)

Burning of fossil field releases carbon as CO2

Sedimentation - accumulation of sediment → turns into rock

EXAMPLES OF MOVEMENT

Animal and plant respiration, fossil fuels → back to atmosphere

Animal decomposition, sedimentation → geosphere

Photosynthesis, marine organisms w/ shells → biosphere

Biosphere → biosphere (food web - shows movement of carbon as well)

NITROGEN CYCLE

Component of amino acids

Limiting - scarce but vital

Fixation - fixed by lightning (abiotic) or microbes in soil/root nodules (biotic)

In atmosphere nitrogen is found as N2

Assimilation - NO3 (nitrate), uptake by plants through roots, then to animals through food web. Plants prefer this phase, incorporate amino acids and DNA of their systems(nitrate → gets pulled from plants → nutrients pulled out of soil) 

Denitrification - NO3 (nitrate) can be converted back to N2 by soil bacteria, nitrogen back to atmosphere

Eutrophication 

PHOSPHORUS CYCLE

Driven by geological processes

No atmospheric stage (different from other cycles)

Fertilizer also contains phosphorus bc of its ability to aid the growth of producers

Taken into producers via assimilation it can then move around the food web via consumption

Runoff from dissolved phosphorus can go to aquatic food webs or marine ecosystems

When in marine ecosystems assimilation can also occur in marine producers

Lithification - rock formation through ocean sedimentation, b/c of time and pressure

aerosol