Nutrient Cycles
Name two ways that carbon is released into the atmosphere using biological processes?
decomposition and respiration
How does water enter into the atmosphere?
evaporation and transpiration
Ability of water to flow through soil or rock
permeability
What causes seasons?
The tilt of Earth
What happens to nitrogen when it is "fixed" and what are 2 ways for nitrogen fixation to happen?
Nitrogen is transformed from N2 gas to soluble ammonia NH3 in soil. Fixation can be caused by bacteria in soil or plant nodules and by lightening.
BONUS - type of plant that has nodules and 3 specific examples
How is heat transferred on Earth?
By ocean currents and global winds moving from the equator to the poles.
What must happen to the rock in order for plants to absorb the phosphorus within them?
Weather and break down into soil.
In global circulation models, what is happening to air at the equator?
Hot moist air rises, slowly cooling and forming clouds and precipitatin
What is the name of the process in which ammonium is converted to nitrate, a form of nitrogen that plants can use?
nitrification
What are the largest 2 carbon reservoirs?
Rocks and oceans.
What leads to the spin of gyres in the ocean and hurricanes?
The Coriolis effect
Term for the distribution of particle sizes (sand, silt, clay) in soil.
What is texture
What is the rainshadow effect? Sketch it!
Why do we need phosphorus? In what form is it uptaken by consumers? How is it expelled?
DNA & ATP! PO4 from plants, PO4 in urine!
How do animals take in their carbon compounds?
What is "by consuming plants and/or animals that have carbon".
Which process within the water cycle is considered "biotic"?
transpiration
Most important factor affecting the formation of soil
What is climate?
How does insolation vary across Earth's surface?
It decreases going from the equator, where the sun hits directly, to the poles, where the sun hits obliquely, as the sun's energy is spread over a larger area
How do humans disrupt the N and P cycles?
N & P- add too much fertilizer, P -mining; N - automobile exhaust (combustion of gas)
2 abiotic carbon cycles - one slow and one fast.
Slow: formation of rocks (sedimentation)
Fast: ocean/air exchange of CO2
What is the energy source that drives the water cycle?
Heat from the sun (solar energy) causes water to evaporate
The 4 components of soil and approximate percent of each
air and water - about 25% each (combined = 50%); humus/organic matter - 5% ; mineral matter - 45%
What is climate
long-term pattern of atmospheric conditions