Earth's Spheres
A tree, a dog, and a mushroom are all part of this Earth system.
What is the biosphere?
This process allows plants to take carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and use it to make food.
What is photosynthesis?
A place where carbon is stored is called a carbon what?
What is a carbon reservoir?
Cutting down large areas of forest is called this.
What is deforestation?
This type of organism plays an especially important role in the nitrogen cycle.
What are bacteria?
A piece of granite, a mountain, and a patch of soil all belong to this sphere.
What is the geosphere?
Name ONE process that releases carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.
What are respiration, decomposition, or combustion/burning?
Name ONE natural carbon reservoir.
What are the ocean, forests/plants, soil, or rocks/fossil fuels?
Burning fossil fuels moves stored carbon into this part of the carbon cycle.
What is the atmosphere?
Nitrogen-fixing bacteria change atmospheric nitrogen into a form that this group of organisms can use.
What are plants?
A student observes a cloud forming over the ocean. Name the TWO Earth spheres directly involved.
What are the atmosphere and hydrosphere?
A dead tree breaks down and carbon from the tree becomes part of the soil. What process is responsible?
What is decomposition?
Why can the ocean be considered a carbon reservoir?
Because it stores a large amount of carbon.
Why does removing a large number of trees affect the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere?
There are fewer trees available to remove carbon dioxide through photosynthesis, and carbon stored in the trees can be released.
Nitrogen and phosphorus are important because they are found in molecules such as these two.
What are DNA and proteins?
A plant is growing in soil while its leaves exchange gases with the air. Name THREE Earth spheres involved.
What are the biosphere, geosphere, and atmosphere?
A carbon atom moves from the atmosphere into a plant, then from the plant into an animal when the animal eats it. Is this an example of the fast or slow carbon cycle?
What is the fast carbon cycle?
A student says, “Most carbon is just floating around in the atmosphere.” What is wrong with this statement?
Much of Earth’s carbon is stored in reservoirs such as the ocean, rocks, soil, and fossil fuels rather than being in the atmosphere.
A forest is cleared and then burned. Describe TWO effects this could have on Earth’s systems.
Possible answers include releasing carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, removing living organisms/habitat from the biosphere, changing the soil/geosphere, and affecting water movement in the hydrosphere.
Unlike carbon and nitrogen, phosphorus does NOT have a major gaseous stage in this sphere.
What is the atmosphere?
A wildfire burns trees, produces smoke, heats the soil, and causes water in the area to evaporate. Explain why this is an example of Earth’s spheres interacting.
Multiple spheres are interacting because the biosphere, atmosphere, geosphere, and hydrosphere are all affected and exchange matter or energy.
A carbon atom becomes trapped underground as fossil fuel and remains there for millions of years. Explain why this is part of the slow carbon cycle.
The carbon is stored for a very long period of time before being released or moved again.
Explain why moving carbon from one reservoir to another does not mean that the carbon has disappeared.
Carbon is continually moved and stored in different places as part of the carbon cycle. It can move between reservoirs but is not destroyed.
A forest is left standing for hundreds of years. Another forest is repeatedly cleared and burned. Which forest would generally store more carbon, and why?
The standing forest would generally store more carbon because living plants and other organic matter can continue to store carbon rather than having that carbon released through burning and decomposition.
A plant takes nitrogen from the soil and uses it to build proteins. An animal then eats the plant. Explain how this demonstrates that matter can move through a biogeochemical cycle.
Nitrogen moves from the physical environment into a plant and then into another living organism, showing how matter cycles between the environment and living things.