Random Bits
These 12 "things" can be found on the x-axis of a climate diagram
What are months of the year?
Describes the average conditions including temperature and precipitation, over long periods of time in a given area.
What is climate?
The 4 biogeochemical cycles we studied
What are the hydrological, carbon, phosphorus, and nitrogen cycles?
The process by which water changes from liquid form to an atmospheric gas.
What is evaporation
Rains almost daily and plants grow year-round in this hot biome.
What is the tropical rain forest?
Climographs show these two things on a graph
What is average monthly temperature and precipitation?
Water that flows over the surface of land toward a river or large body of water
What is runoff?
The cycle in which bacteria plays a vital part
What is the nitrogen cycle?
This term describes how phosphorus moves from deep underground toward the surface of the earth.
What is geological uplift?
Spruce trees, fir trees, pine trees, bushes, shrubs, and ferns are all which type of tree?
What are coniferous trees?
A process in which a nutrient is absorbed into an organism through its roots or by consuming another organism
What is assimilation?
The process in which carbon dioxide is absorbed by plants from the atmosphere
What is photosynthesis?
The only cycle in which there is no gaseous form (it does not enter the atmosphere as a gas)
What is the phosphorus cycle?
This cycle is important because even though it's extremely abundant in the air and animals need this nutrient to form proteins and DNA, we cannot get it through the air directly.
What is the nitrogen cycle?
Soil that stays permanently frozen is called _______________ and it can be found in the biome called ________________
What are permafrost and tundra
This is the main difference between group 1 and group 2 below:
1. Lakes, ponds, rivers, streams
2. Saltmarshes, intertidal zones, coral reefs, ocean
What is salinity?
The process in which biomass or fossil fuels are burned, releasing carbon dioxide into the atmosphere
What is combustion?
______________ means that water moves from the surface of Earth into the atmosphere, whereas ______________ means that water moves from plants into the atmosphere
What are evaporation and transpiration?
This cycle is disrupted when humans burn fossil fuels too quickly.
What is the carbon cycle?
These are the names of 2 terrestrial biomes and 2 aquatic biomes
What are...
(name 2)
Taiga, tundra, temperate rainforest, temperate seasonal forest, shrubland, temperate grassland, savanna, tropical rain forest, desert
(name 2)
Ponds/lakes, rivers/streams, wetland, estuary, intertidal zone, coral reef, open ocean
Trees that shed their leaves once a year and then regrow them in the fall are know as...
What are deciduous trees?
The process in which denitrifying bacteria convert nitrate ions (NO3-) and nitrous oxide (N2O) from the soil into nitrogen gas (N2) in the air
What is denitrification?
These two cycles are directly disrupted when homeowners, businesses, and farms use too much fertilizer on their plants, resulting in too much algae growing ponds, lakes, and the ocean.
What are the nitrogen and phosphorus cycles?
These are 3 reservoirs of carbon on earth.
What are... (need 3)
the atmosphere
living organisms
surface water
soil
fossil fuels
This geographic characteristic is a main reason why the biomes are so different. At the equator, this geographic characteristic has a value of 0 degrees.
What is latitude?