WEATHERING OF ROCKS - Weathering of rocks describes the process of weakening and breaking down

of rocks and minerals. This can happen via both nonliving and living factors, such as temperature changes, plants and
animals, acids, salts and water, whether solid or liquid.Weathering of rocks takes place over a period of time.

RESPIRATION - a process in living organisms involving the production of energy, typically with the intake of oxygen
and the release of carbon dioxide from the oxidation of complex organic substances.

MARINE RESPIRATION – (Aquatic respiration) is the process whereby an aquatic animal obtains oxygen from water.

LEACHING/RUNOFF - drain away from soil, ash, or similar material by the action of percolating liquid, especially
rainwater.

MARINE SEDIMENT - any deposit of insoluble material, primarily rock and soil particles, transported from land areas
to the ocean by wind, ice, and rivers, as well as the remains of marine organisms, products of submarine volcanism,
chemical precipitates from seawater, and materials from outer space (e.g., meteorites) that accumulate on the seafloor.

MICROBIAL RESPIRATION AND DECOMPOSITION - Decomposition of organic material and the subsequent
liberation of nutrients that become available to plants is a key process in the ecosystem. It is also a process in which a
great part of the assimilated carbon is released to the atmosphere. Disturbance of this process, e.g. by heavy metals,
may have great consequences both for the nutrient availability to the plants and the content of CO 2 in the air. One
reason for this is the extensive forest area in both Sweden and the world as a whole.

Although fossil fuels start as organic material containing carbon, hydrogen and oxygen, fossil fuels are unusual
stores of organic material that have undergone geologic alteration that removes oxgyen, and leaves carbon and
hydrogen. Thus fossil fuels such as oil and gas are called hydrocarbons. Rather than being totally decomposed and
low in energy concent, fossil fuels are altered and contain high energy content. It is on combustion with oxygen, in
machinery and as fuel, that fossil fuels are finally decomposed and the solar energy contained within it finally released
at the Earth's surface millions of years after a photosynthesizer first captured sunlight in its cells. Process that endows
food (plants and animals) with the energy it contains, and endows fossil fuels, that are the chemical remains of living
things, with energy.

SUBLIMATION is the transition of a substance directly from the solid to the gas phase, without passing through the
intermediate liquid phase. Desublimation is the reverse process of sublimation.

PRECIPITATION - In meteorology, precipitation is any product of the condensation of atmospheric water vapour that
falls under gravity. The main forms of precipitation include drizzle, rain, sleet, snow, graupel and hail.

EVAPORATION is the process by which water changes from a liquid to a gas or vapor. Evaporation is the primary
pathway that water moves from the liquid state back into the water cycle as atmospheric water vapor. Studies have
shown that the oceans, seas, lakes, and rivers provide nearly 90 percent of the moisture in the atmosphere via
evaporation, with the remaining 10 percent being contributed by plant transpiration.

EVAPOTRANSPIRATION can be defined as the sum of all forms of evaporation plus transpiration, we'll be defining it
as the sum of evaporation from the land surface plus transpiration from plants.

Condensation is the process where water vapor becomes liquid. It is the reverse of evaporation, where liquid water
becomes a vapor. Condensation happens one of two ways: Either the air is cooled to its dew point or it becomes
so saturated with water vapor that it cannot hold any more water.

Dew Point - Dew point is the temperature at which condensation happens. (Dew is simply condensed water in
the atmosphere.) Air temperatures can reach or fall below the dew point naturally, as they often do at night. Thats why
lawns, cars, and houses are often coated with water droplets in the morning.

Fog drip is water dripping to the ground during fog. It occurs when water droplets from the fog adhere to the needles
or leaves of trees or other objects, coalesce into larger drops and then drop to the ground.

Seepage (countable and uncountable, plural seepages) The process by which a liquid leaks through a porous
substance; the process of seeping. Water that has seeped or oozed through a porous soil.

Infiltration is the process by which water on the ground surface enters the soil.
Volcanic vents are openings in the Earth's crust from which lava and pyroclastic flows are ejected.

Denitrification. : the loss or removal of nitrogen or nitrogen compounds specifically : reduction of nitrates or nitrites
commonly by bacteria (as in soil) that usually results in the escape of nitrogen into the air.

Nitrification is the biological oxidation of ammonia or ammonium to nitrite followed by the oxidation of the nitrite to
nitrate. The transformation of ammonia to nitrite is usually the rate limiting step of nitrification. Nitrification is an
important step in the nitrogen cycle in soil.

Any metabolic waste product that contains nitrogen. Urea and uric acid are the most common nitrogenous
waste products in terrestrial animals; freshwater fish excrete ammonia and marine fish excrete both urea and
trimethylamine oxide.

Nitrogen fixation is a process by which molecular nitrogen in the air is converted into ammonia or related nitrogenous
compounds in soil. Atmospheric nitrogen is molecular dinitrogen, a relatively nonreactive molecule that is metabolically
useless to all but a few microorganisms.

Biochemical and physico-chemical ac tivity can release nitrogen from lake sediments in the form of ammonium that
will accumulate under anaerobic conditions.

An aerobic environment is characterized by the presence of free oxygen (O2) while ananaerobic environment lacks
free oxygen but may contain atomic oxygen bound in compounds such as nitrate (NO3), nitrite (NO2), and sulfites
(SO3).

detritus (/dɪˈtraɪtəs/) is dead particulate organic material, as distinguished from dissolved organic material. Detritus
typically includes the bodies or fragments of bodies of dead organisms, and fecal material. Detritus typically hosts
communities of microorganisms that colonize and decompose, i. e., remineralize, it.