Matter Cycles through Ecosystems.

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Matter Cycles through Ecosystems.

• ALL ECOSYSTEMS NEED CERTAIN MATERIALS.
• WATER CYCLES THROUGH ECOSYSTEMS
• CARBON CYCLES THROUGH ECOSYSTEMS
• NITROGEN CYLCLES THROUGH ECOSYSTEMS

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All Ecosystems Need Certain Materials

• Living things depend on their environment to meet
  their needs.
• All of the materials an organism takes in are
  returned to the ecosystem, while the organism
  lives or after it dies.
• The movement of matter through the living and
  nonliving parts of an ecosystem is a continuous
  cycle. Matter never leaves an ecosystem, it just
  changes form. The most important cycles in
  ecosystems are WATER, NITROGEN and CARBON
  DIOXIDE.

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Water Cycles thru Ecosystem

• Water is stored on Earths surface in Lakes,
  Rivers, Oceans. Also found underground, a
  lot in glaciers and polar ice sheets.
• Water is part of living things, and is constantly
  moving through the environment WATER CYCLE.
• Water is made of Hydrogen Oxygen it constantly
  is changing form (gas-liquid-solid). Usually is
  gas in atmosphere (vapor), condenses to fall as
  precipitation (snow, sleet, rain, hail), and
  evaporates back to vapor into atmosphere.
• Animals release water vapor when breathing
  (respiration) and plants do it through
  transpiration.

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Carbon Cycles thru Ecosystem

• Carbon is an element found in all living things.
  It is through Carbon Dioxide gas (CO2) that
  carbon enters the living parts of an ecosystem.
• Plants use CO2 to make sugar (in photosynthesis).
  Sugars are carbon compounds important as a food
  source to supply energy to organisms for growth
  life. Energy is released from food via
  respiration in organisms. Carbon then gets
  cycled back into atmosphere as CO2 gas. When
  living things die, the rest of carbon that makes
  up living matter gets released.
• Earths ocean has a lot more carbon in it than
  air does. CO2 is dissolved in water, used by
  algae to make food via photosynthesis.
• Marine organisms also release CO2 through
  respiration and carbon on the ocean floor when
  they die.

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Nitrogen Cycles thru Ecosystem

• Nitrogen is another element important to life
  that cycles thru ecosystems. 4/5 of air you
  breathe is clear, colorless nitrogen gas. But we
  cant get it from the air, instead we get it from
  plants.
• Plants absorb compounds of nitrogen with roots
  from soil (also cant get pure N from air).
• Lightning fixes or breaks apart pure nitrogen
  into a form plants can use (it falls to ground
  with rain). But most soil nitrogen comes from
  nitrogen-fixing bacteria that live around roots
  of plants in oceans to change gas nitrogen into
  usable nitrogen compounds.
• Also, decomposers break down dead matter in
  oceans soil to release nitrogen, used again by
  living things.
• Some nitrogen goes back to atmosphere by certain
  bacteria, releasing nitrogen gas.

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