Earth's Spheres
What are spheres, and how do they help life?
Spheres are the natural capital of resources and ecosystems services on which life depends is the product of earth spheres and energy from the sun.
What is the sun?
The primary source of energy for most ecosystems.
What is the difference between a food chain and a food web?
Food chains are a sequence of organisms that serves as a source of nutrients or energy for the next level of organisms. A food web is a network of interconnected food chains but mostly useful in terms of studying the effects.
What is the greenhouse effect and global warming?
Greenhouse effect is simply earth trapping heat and energy that comes from the sun in order to make us and the earth warm. Global warming is the evolving of warming this earth will once come to in the future
This process converts atmospheric nitrogen gas into ammonia, making it usable for plants
What is nitrogen fixation?
What are the main layers of the geosphere?
The core, mantle, and crust
What is photosynthesis?
The process where plants and other organisms use sunlight to synthesize foods with the help of chlorophyll.
In terms of ecosystem, what is an abiotic, and what is a biotic?
Biotic are things like plants, animals, microbes, all other organisms / Abiotic are water, air, rocks, nutrients, thermal energy, sunlight
How do scientists study our ecosystem?
Field and laboratory research, Controlled experiments, Models
Plants primarily absorb nitrogen in this specific form from the soil
What are nitrates?
What are the two main gases that make up the majority of Earth's atmosphere?
Nitrogen and oxygen
What is an energy pyramid
A diagram that shows the relative amounts of energy available at each trophic level.
Could an ecosystem function without a decomposer? Why or why not?
No, because they are needed for breaking dead organic and give nutrients to the soil and environment.
How do humans make carbon dioxide worse for our environment?
Although it is natural, humans are taking it over the natural limit with things like industrialization
When decomposers break down dead organisms, they return nitrogen to the soil in this form
How does the geosphere contribute to the hydrosphere?
It provides the solid land surface for water to collect and flow on
Why does the energy pyramid get smaller at the top?
This happens because energy is lost at each level of the food chain.
This group of organisms obtains its energy from the sun and forms the base of the food chain, while these other organisms eat producers or other consumers, and these last organisms break down dead organic waste.
What are producers, consumers, and decomposers
How do humans alter the phosphorus cycle?
By mining phosphorus deposits to make fertilizer, By clearing tropical forests, which increases erosion and reduces phosphorus in topsoil, By adding large quantities of phosphate ions to streams, lakes, and oceans as a result of fertilizer runoff and topsoil erosion
This nutrient cycle differs from others because it lacks a significant atmospheric phase.
How can deforestation impact the atmosphere and hydrosphere?
Less CO2 absorption, more runoff, and potential erosion
What happens to energy as it flows through food chains and food webs?
Energy flows through ecosystems via movement between trophic levels through food chains and food webs
Organisms that create their own food, such as plants and algae, are known as these.
What are producers?
How does human activity like the mining of large amounts of phosphate to make fertilizer
It simply disrupts the phosphorus cycle by clearing tropical forest, humans expose the topsoil to greater erosion.
This molecule, vital for energy, contains the phosphorus nutrient.
What is ATP