How is biosphere formed

Powered by. The biosphere is made up of the parts of Earth where life exists. The biosphere extends from the deepest root system s of trees, to the dark environment of ocean trench es, to lush rain forest s and high mountain tops.

Scientists describe the Earth in terms of sphere s. The solid surface layer of the Earth is the lithosphere. The atmosphere is the layer of air that stretches above the lithosphere. Since life exists on the ground, in the air, and in the water, the biosphere overlaps all these spheres. Origin of the Biosphere The biosphere has existed for about 3. Ancient prokaryotes included single-celled organisms such as bacteria and archaea. Some prokaryotes developed a unique chemical process.

They were able to use sunlight to make simple sugar s and oxygen out of water and carbon dioxide , a process called photosynthesis. These photosynthetic organisms were so plentiful that they changed the biosphere. Over a long period of time, the atmosphere developed a mix of oxygen and other gases that could sustain new forms of life. The addition of oxygen to the biosphere allowed more complex life-forms to evolve. Millions of different plant s and other photosynthetic species developed.

Animal s, which consume plants and other animals evolve d. Bacteria and other organisms evolved to decompose , or break down, dead animals and plants. The biosphere benefits from this food web. The remains of dead plants and animals release nutrient s into the soil and ocean. These nutrients are re- absorb ed by growing plants. This exchange of food and energy makes the biosphere a self-supporting and self-regulating system.

The biosphere is sometimes thought of as one large ecosystem —a complex community of living and nonliving things function ing as a single unit. More often, however, the biosphere is described as having many ecosystems. Biosphere Reserves People play an important part in maintaining the flow of energy in the biosphere.

Sometimes, however, people disrupt the flow. For example, in the atmosphere, oxygen levels decrease and carbon dioxide levels increase when people clear forest s or burn fossil fuel s such as coal and oil.

Oil spill s and industrial wastes threaten life in the hydrosphere. The future of the biosphere will depend on how people interact with other living things within the zone of life. A network of biosphere reserves exists to establish a working, balanced relationship between people and the natural world. Currently, there are biosphere reserve s all over the world. The first biosphere reserve was established in Yangambi, Democratic Republic of Congo.

Yangambi, in the fertile Congo River Basin, has 32, species of trees and such endemic species as forest elephants and red river hogs. The biosphere reserve at Yangambi supports activities such as sustainable agriculture , hunting, and mining. One of the newest biosphere reserves is in Yayu, Ethiopia. The area is developed for agriculture. At the time, the oceans were rich in dissolved iron, which reacts with oxygen to form iron-oxide minerals like magnetite and hematite—rust, more or less.

Once all that iron had been used up when dissolved iron combines with oxygen, the resulting iron-oxides sink to the ocean floor , there was nowhere left for the oxygen to go except into the atmosphere.

As the cyanobacteria continued to thrive, each year saw a little more oxygen in the atmosphere than the one before. Today, no single human being has the capacity to change the atmosphere.

But seven billion people, each emitting a small amount of carbon dioxide, can have a profound effect on the way our planet works. The atmosphere is the gaseous covering above the Earth. It contains different gases like carbon dioxide, oxygen, and other gases to help living organisms like plants, animals, and humans sustain life. However, the upper region of the atmosphere has a low composition of oxygen; that is why it is possible to find the flying birds under the region of meters of the Earth.

The hydrosphere refers to all the waters on Earth. Thus, it is also called the aquatic region. However, it also includes solid forms, like glaciers. The hydrosphere where life is sustained plays an important role in regulating the temperature on Earth. Moreover, it supplies the water necessary for all living things. As for the biotic components, they include plants, animals, and microorganisms. These biological components are also the builder of the food chain of the ecosystem.

Plants are the primary producers. They produce their food through photosynthesis. Moreover, they are also known as autotrophs. They also take part in recycling waste material. However, they are the only primary source for every living organism, including animals and humans. These are the consumers.

They cannot produce their food from inorganic sources. They depend upon other sources like plants or other small animals. They are also known as heterotrophs. The food they intake is used to release energy and store it for future use.

The energy is used for growth and development. Microorganisms are a major part of the ecosystem. They include fungi, algae, bacteria, viruses, etc. Moreover, they serve as decomposers by decomposing the amount of waste or dead materials. They use this process of decomposing as their food source. The biosphere is mainly described by the reference of the whole life and living organisms around the Earth. It consists of five levels of organizational structure:. The large biosphere is divided into large parts of biomes.

Scientists classified biomes into five different types: tundra, grassland, forests, deserts, and aquatic biomes. Rivers, lakes, seas, oceans, and other aqueous habitats are inhabited by a large diversity of plants and animals. Conversely, desserts are the driest areas of the Earth with the lowest measurement of rain per year. Grasslands cover the green areas of the Earth. However, it experiences moderate rainfall but not enough to grow large trees.

Forests are areas dominated by large trees. Tundras are the vast treeless Arctic region wherein the subsoil is permanently frozen.

The ecosystem is made up of a biological community and the physical environment. And so it includes both the biotic and abiotic factors. The living things and their physical environment function together as a unit. Four types of ecosystems are terrestrial, freshwater, marine, and artificial. The terrestrial ecosystem is the ecosystem occurring on land and is exemplified by the grassland ecosystem and the forest ecosystem. The freshwater ecosystem is an aquatic ecosystem and exemplified by lentic and lotic ecosystems.

The marine ecosystem is a saltwater ecosystem and therefore found in seas and oceans. The artificial ecosystem is a man-made system, such as a terrarium. As the biosphere shows wide diversity, different species build up the community. These species survive in the areas where abiotic factors like temperature, ph, and nutrients are tolerable or optimum.

A biological community, though, is defined as the assemblage of interacting organisms either of the same or different species coexisting in a particular area and time. All the members of the particular species living in the single habitat are known as the population. The population size can vary from a few to thousands of members. Overpopulation is a condition wherein the population of a species exceeds the carrying capacity of an ecological niche.

A population decline, on the contrary, is one in which the size declines. The reduction of population size for a short period of time is referred to as a population bottleneck. An excess of population size may lead to a struggle for survival. Species will compete against everybody for limited resources.

Thus, various symbiotic relationships have been established. Those that tend to give and take in a relationship are said to be in a mutualism whereas those that tend to cause or bring harm to other organisms may be in a parasitic or predatory kind of symbiosis.