Sphere to Sphere
This sphere contains all of Earth’s liquid, solid, and gaseous water, including glaciers, lakes, and oceans.
What is the hydrosphere?
This term describes all of the living (or once-living) parts of an ecosystem, such as fallen leaves, dead logs, or animals.
What are biotic factors?
These organisms, also called autotrophs, capture energy from the sun or chemicals to produce sugar molecules.
What are primary producers?
Approximately 90% of the water vapor above land in the hydrologic cycle is contributed by this plant process.
What is transpiration?
This element makes up 78% of the volume of our atmosphere, but cannot be used directly by plants in its gaseous form.
What is nitrogen?
It is the thinnest layer of Earth's spheres, defined as the narrow band of air, water, soil, and land where all living things exist.
What is the biosphere?
This ecological level is defined as a group of individuals of the same species that live in the same area and interbreed with one another.
What is a population?
This is the chemical formula for the process of photosynthesis, which yields carbohydrates and oxygen.
What is 6CO2 + 6H2O + light energy yields C6H12O6 + 6O2
This is the largest geological reservoir (store) of carbon on Earth.
What are marine sediments?
This is the only major biogeochemical cycle that does not include a pathway through Earth's atmosphere
What is the phosphorus cycle?
This atmospheric layer contains the ozone layer, which acts as a global sunscreen by absorbing 95% of harmful UV radiation.
What is the stratosphere?
Unlike a habitat, which is an organism's "address," this term describes an organism's functional "job" or role in its community.
What is a niche?
This alternative chemical process is used by deep-sea vent bacteria to produce food using hydrogen sulfide instead of sunlight.
What is chemosynthesis?
Humans disrupt this cycle by clearing forests faster than they can grow, destroying vegetation that absorbs this greenhouse gas.
What is the carbon cycle? (Accept: carbon dioxide)
These organisms are crucial to the nitrogen cycle because their biological action converts atmospheric nitrogen into usable nitrate ions for plants.
What is bacteria? (Accept: nitrogen-fixing bacteria)
This spherical system provides the planet with the gravity and mass needed to keep our atmosphere from escaping into outer space.
What is the geosphere?
Species with narrow niches and highly restricted tolerance ranges, like the giant panda, are known by this term.
What are specialists?
Decomposers like yeast use this type of cellular respiration to break down sugars in the complete absence of oxygen.
What is anaerobic respiration (or fermentation)?
This liquid layer of underground rock, sand, and gravel is where freshwater collects as groundwater.
What is an aquifer?
When excess fertilizers wash into lakes and streams, the resulting run-off causes this rapid, oxygen-depleting ecosystem hazard.
What is excessive algal growth (or algal blooms)?
This natural warming process occurs when solar energy reflects off Earth's surface and interacts with atmospheric gases like CO2 and methane.
What is the greenhouse effect?
To avoid direct competition for resources, competing species will often divide up a niche in space or time, a process known as this
What is resource partitioning?
When energy is transferred from one trophic level to the next, this is the percentage of energy that is actually stored and passed on.
What is 10%?
Replacing natural forests and wetlands with urban concrete and asphalt alters the water cycle by dramatically reducing this process.
What is infiltration?
Unlike micronutrients, which are needed in tiny amounts, these are the essential nutrients that organisms need in large amounts to survive.
What are macronutrients?