Ecosystem Recycling

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Ecosystem Recycling
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Ecosystem Recycling

• Matter must be recycled and reused
• Substances pass between living and nonliving
  worlds
• Water, carbon, nitrogen, calcium, phosphorus
• Biogeochemical cycles

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Water Cycle

• Water is crucial to life
• Cells contain 70-90 percent water
• Dissolves a variety of compounds
• Filters out UV light from the sun
• Expands as it freezes
• Liquid over a wide temperature range
• Changes temperature slowly
• Requires large amounts of energy to evaporate

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Water Cycle

• Where water is found
• Water vapor (atmosphere)
• Groundwater (in soil or underground formations of
  porous rock)
• Trapped within living things
• Bodies of water
• Lakes, rivers, streams, oceans (substantial )

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Water Cycle

• Movement of water (water cycle)
• Evaporation
• Adds water as vapor to the atmosphere
• Transpiration
• Plants release water through leaves
• Animals release water when they breathe, sweat,
  or excrete
• Precipitation
• Water leaving the atmosphere
• Amount depends on abiotic factors (temperature
  air pressure)

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Global warming
Condensation
Condensation
Ice and snow
Evaporation from ocean
Transpiration from plants
Evaporation from land
Precipitation to land
Surface runoff
Increased flooding from wetland destruction
Precipitation to ocean
Runoff
Lakes and reservoirs
Reduced recharge of aquifers and flooding from
covering land with crops and buildings
Point source pollution
Infiltration and percolation into aquifer
Surface runoff
Ocean
Groundwater movement (slow)
Aquifer depletion from overpumping
Fig. 3-18, p. 54
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Carbon Cycle

• Carbon dioxide
• Greenhouse gas traps heat in the atmosphere.
• Without it the Earth would be a frozen world.
• There is 30 more carbon dioxide in the air
  today than there was 150 years ago
• Humans burning more fuel
• Greenhouse gases are causing our planet to become
  warmer.

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Carbon Cycle

• Autotrophs use carbon dioxide (CO2) to make
  carbohydrates
• Major parts of the cycle
• Aerobic respiration (plants animals)
• Photosynthesis (plants)
• Forest fires
• Fossil fuels add CO2 to the atmosphere
• Burning coal, oil, and natural gas

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Carbon dioxide in atmosphere
Respiration
Photosynthesis
Burning fossil fuels
Forest fires
Animals (consumers)
Diffusion
Deforestation
Plants (producers)
Carbon in plants (producers)
Respiration
Transportation
Carbon in animals (consumers)
Carbon dioxide dissolved in ocean
Decomposition
Marine food webs Producers, consumers, decomposers
Carbon fossil fuels on
Carbon in limestone or dolomite sediments
Compaction
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Nitrogen Cycle

• Nitrogen is needed to make proteins and nucleic
  acids (DNA)
• Nitrogen gas makes up 78
• Multicellular plants and animals cannot utilize
  atmospheric nitrogen
• Needs to go through nitrogen fixation
• Nitrogen fixation
• Converting nitrogen gas to nitrate
• Nitrogen-fixing bacteria
• Transforms nitrogen gas into usable form

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Nitrogen Cycle

• Ammonification
• Decomposers breaking down dead organisms, urine
  and dung to release the nitrogen in the form of
  ammonium (NH3)
• Nitrification
• Soil bacteria take the ammonium oxidize (add
  oxygen) it into nitrites
• Plants use nitrites to form amino acids

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Nitrogen in atmosphere
Denitrification by bacteria
Electrical storms
Nitrogen in animals (consumers)
Nitrogen oxides from burning fuel
Volcanic activity
Nitrification by bacteria
Nitrogen in plants (producers)
Nitrates from fertilizer runoff and decomposition
Decomposition
Uptake by plants
Nitrate in soil
Nitrogen loss to deep ocean sediments
Nitrogen in ocean sediments
Bacteria
Ammonia in soil
Fig. 3-20, p. 57
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Phosphorus Cycle

• Does not cycle through the atmosphere
• Obtained from terrestrial rock formations
• Limiting factor on land and in freshwater
  ecosystems
• Biologically important for producers and
  consumers
• Phosphorus Cycle
• Movement of phosphorus from the environment to
  organisms and back to the environment

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Phosphorus Cycle

• Phosphorus is essential
• Needed in animals to form bones, teeth, molecules
  such as DNA RNA
• Plants get phosphorous from soil water
• Animals get phosphorous from eating plants or
  animals

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Phosphates in sewage
Fertilizer phosphates
Plate tectonics
Phosphates in mining waste
Runoff
Runoff
Sea birds
Runoff
Phosphate in rock (fossil bones, guano)
Erosion
Ocean food chain
Animals (consumers)
Phosphate in shallow ocean sediments
Phosphate dissolved in water
Phosphate in deep ocean sediments
Plants (producers)
Bacteria
Fig. 3-21, p. 58
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