Carbon Cycle
The biological process carried out by autotrophs that absorbs carbon dioxide from the atmosphere to make glucose and oxygen.
What is photosynthesis?
The gas that makes up about 78% of Earth's atmosphere, but cannot be used directly by plants or animals.
What is nitrogen gas (N2)?
The process where liquid surface water is heated by the sun and transforms into water vapor gas.
Evaporation
The main way the phosphorus cycle fundamentally differs from the carbon, nitrogen, and water cycles.
What is having no significant gaseous/atmospheric phase?
The process where building roads or agricultural fields divides large, continuous forests into small, isolated patches.
What is habitat fragmentation?
This process carried out by living organisms breaks down glucose and releases carbon dioxide back into the air or water.
What is cellular respiration?
The process carried out by soil bacteria that converts soil nitrates (NO3) back into nitrogen gas (N2).
What is denitrification?
The loss of water vapor directly from plant leaves into the atmosphere through stomata.
What is transpiration?
Earth's primary biological reservoir where phosphorus is stored long-term.
What are rocks (and soil minerals/sediments)?
Environmental resources like coal, crude oil, and natural gas that take millions of years to form and cannot be quickly replaced.
What are nonrenewable resources (or fossil fuels)?
Earth's primary long-term geological reservoir for carbon, formed over millions of years on ocean floors.
What are sedimentary rocks (or marine sediments/limestone)?
The process of converting inert atmospheric nitrogen gas (N2) into biologically usable ammonia (NH3).
What is nitrogen fixation?
As water vapor rises into the atmosphere and cools, it undergoes this process to form clouds.
What is condensation?
The slow physical and chemical process that breaks down rock formations to release inorganic phosphate ions into soil and water.
What is weathering (or erosion)?
Extracting renewable biological resources from an ecosystem faster than natural reproduction can replace them.
What is overharvesting (or overexploitation)?
The chemical process of burning coal, oil, or natural gas that rapidly releases stored underground carbon into the atmosphere.
What is combustion?
The group of microorganisms primarily responsible for converting inert nitrogen gas (N2) into usable ammonia (NH3).
What are nitrogen-fixing bacteria?
Precipitation that lands on saturated ground or paved urban surfaces and flows across the landscape into streams and lakes.
What is surface runoff?
Phosphorus is essential for life because it is needed for formation of...
What is DNA and ATP?
The process where persistent, non-biodegradable toxins become increasingly concentrated in organisms at higher trophic levels in a food web.
What is biomagnification?
The ongoing issue caused when oceans absorb excess atmospheric CO2, forming carbonic acid and lowering the pH of ocean water.
What is ocean acidification?
The reason nitrogen is essential to all living things is that it is a key building block used to make these molecules, which form muscle tissue, enzymes, and DNA.
What are proteins (or nucleic acids)?
The process by which surface water soaks down through soil and permeable rock layers to recharge underground aquifers.
What is infiltration?
Because phosphorus lacks an atmospheric gas phase and relies entirely on the slow weathering of rock, it frequently acts as this key ecological constraint in freshwater and soil ecosystems.
What is a limiting nutrient (or limiting factor)?
Non-native species introduced to new ecosystems that outcompete native wildlife due to a lack of natural predators.
What is invasive species?