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Biology library
Course: Biology library > Unit 28
Lesson 7: Biogeochemical cycles- Intro to biogeochemical cycles
- Biogeochemical cycles overview
- The water cycle
- The water cycle
- The carbon cycle
- The carbon cycle
- The nitrogen cycle
- The nitrogen cycle
- The phosphorus cycle
- Phosphorus cycle
- Eutrophication and dead zones
- Biogeochemical cycles
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Intro to biogeochemical cycles
Get an overview of how atoms are recycled through Earth's ecosystems via biogeochemical cycles.
Key points
- Energy flows through an ecosystem and is dissipated as heat, but chemical elements are recycled.
- The ways in which an element—or compound such as water—moves between its various living and nonliving forms and locations in the biosphere is called a biogeochemical cycle.
- Biogeochemical cycles important to living organisms include the water, carbon, nitrogen, phosphorus, and sulfur cycles.
Introduction
What is your body made of? Not to put too fine a point on it: atoms. Lots and lots of them. About 7,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 to be precise.
If we really walk it backwards, most of the elements that make up our bodies—and those of every other living thing!—were born in dying stars billions of years ago. That's pretty cool, but it doesn't capture the whole picture. What have the atoms of your body been doing more recently, during their time on Earth?
Energy flows, but matter is recycled.
Energy flows directionally through Earth’s ecosystems, typically entering in the form of sunlight and exiting in the form of heat. However, the chemical components that make up living organisms are different: they get recycled.
What does that mean? For one thing, the atoms in your body are not brand new. Instead, they've been cycling through the biosphere for a long, long time, and they've been part of many organisms and nonliving compounds along the way. You may or may not believe in reincarnation as a spiritual concept, but there's no question that atoms in your body have been part of a huge number of living and nonliving things over the course of time!
The six most common elements in organic molecules—carbon, nitrogen, hydrogen, oxygen, phosphorus, and sulfur—take a variety of chemical forms. They may be stored for long or short periods in the atmosphere, on land, in water, or beneath the Earth’s surface, as well as in the bodies of living organisms. Geologic processes—such as weathering of rocks, erosion, water drainage, and the subduction of continental plates—all play a role in this recycling of materials, as do interactions among organisms.
The ways in which an element—or, in some cases, a compound such as water—moves between its various living and nonliving forms and locations is called a biogeochemical cycle. This name reflects the importance of chemistry and geology as well as biology in helping us understand these cycles.
Which biogeochemical cycles are key to life?
Water, which contains hydrogen and oxygen, is essential for living organisms. That places the water cycle pretty high on the list of cycles we care about!
The hydrosphere—the set of places where water can be found as it cycles on Earth—is large and diverse. Water is present as a liquid on the Earth's surface and underneath the ground, as ice in the polar ice caps and glaciers, and as water vapor in the atmosphere. For more information about how water cycles among these forms, check out the water cycle article.
Water makes up more than half of our bodies, but humans cannot live by water alone. Instead, there are some other key elements that keep our bodies running and are part of biogeochemical cycles:
- Carbon is found in all organic macromolecules and is also a key component of fossil fuels. See the carbon cycle article for more info.
- Nitrogen is needed for our
- Phosphorus is a key component of
- Sulfur is key to protein structure and is released to the atmosphere by the burning of fossil fuels.
These cycles don't happen in isolation, and the water cycle is a particularly important driver of other biogeochemical cycles. For example, the movement of water is critical for the leaching of nitrogen and phosphate into rivers, lakes, and oceans. The ocean is also a major reservoir—holding tank—for carbon.
Though each element or compound takes its own route, all of these key chemical nutrients cycle through the biosphere, moving between the biotic—living—and abiotic—nonliving—worlds and from one living organism to another.
Want to join the conversation?
how can we relate biogeochemical cycles with flow of energy and ecological balance?(9 votes)
For ecological balance energy and biogeochemical cycles need to be preformed(1 vote)
I didn't understand how can matter be recycled?(8 votes)- I agree. This article contains big words that many young adults my age cannot understand.(7 votes)
- So, are nitrogen, carbon and oxygen considered ''new''?(3 votes)
you can call
recycled or reformed .NEW may or may not be correct(1 vote)
Under the third title (Energy flows, but matter is cycled), in the third paragraph it mentions only the six most important biogeochemical cycles. But all bioelements undergo a biogeochemical cycle, right? Even oligoelements and trace elements? I mean, they must come from somewhere.(0 votes)
Carbon cycle.
Nitrogen cycle.
Nutrient cycle.
Oxygen cycle.
Phosphorus cycle.
Sulfur cycle.
Rock cycle.
Water cycle.(10 votes)
What is an example of an abiotic reservoir?(4 votes)- explain which cycle (water, carbon, or nitrogen) relies mostly on physical changes to move matter through the biosphere.(2 votes)
To answer this, think about what a physical and chemical change are. Physical changes change the physical properties of a substance but don't change what it's made out of. Chemical changes involve chemical reactions and rearrange atoms in substances. Now we think, which of these cycles keeps the substance the same throughout?
The answer to that would be the water cycle. Through evaporation, condensation, precipitation, etc, water just changes its state and some other properties. We don't take the hydrogen and oxygen and rearrange them in any way, or anything like that.
If you take the carbon and nitrogen cycles, there you have carbon cycling between inorganic CO2 in the atomosphere and organic carbon-based compounds in organisms. There's a chemical change right there. The nitrogen cycle involves atmospheric inorganic nitrogen (N2) turning into organic ammonia (NH3). Another chemical change.(3 votes)
Do we use the biogeochemical cycle everyday?(2 votes)- Where does the mass of a plant come from?(1 vote)
Since most of the mass of a plant is from various hydrocarbon molecules the plant gets them from the air around them.(2 votes)
- Where does the carbon go after the animal eats the plant?(1 vote)
After an animal eats a plant, the carbon from the plant becomes part of the animal's body. Some of it is used to build tissues and cells, while some is used for energy. Some carbon is also released back into the environment through waste.(1 vote)
- How do we use the biogeochemical cycle everyday of our lives and how does it impact us?(1 vote)
