BIOGEOCHEMICAL CYCLES

Directions: Color and make a key for each of the following cycles. Answer the questions as you read
about

The Water Cycle

1. Name three important needs for the water cycle.

1. Habitat for many species of plants, animals, and microorganisms,

2. Most abundant substance in living organisms or things,
3. Important for biochemical mechanisms: digestion, cellular respiration
2. How is water distributed through the biosphere?
Water is distributed in a cycle called the water (hydrologic) cycle.

3. What draws water back down to Earth?

Precipitation and gravity draws the water back in the form of rain, sleet, and snow.

4. What is transpiration?
When water is absorbed by the roots of a tree and used in photosynthesis, but it is lost from
their leaves by evaporation.

5. What determines which plants grow where?

The amount of precipitation received by an area.

6. Name two ways water travels from land to enter the ocean.

1. Seepage from the ground,

2. Runoffs from the surface.

7. What does runoff include?

The flow from rivers, melting snowfields, and glaciers.

 BIOGEOCHEMICAL CYCLES
Directions: Color and make a key for each of the following cycles. Answer the questions as you read
about each cycle.

The Carbon Cycle

1. What are macronutrients? What are micronutrients?

Macronutrients- used by organisms in large quantites

micronutrients- used by organisms in small quanities

2. What is the role of each of the following in the carbon cycle?

Give an example of each.

a. Primary producers

Photosynthesis
Plants

b. Secondary producers
 Cellular Respiration
Animals
c. Decomposers

Decay
Small animals; microorganisms

3. Where is most of the Earth’s carbon located? What form is it?

Atmosphere-Carbon Dioxide

4. How does carbon enter the biotic part of the ecosystem?

Photosynthesis

5. What function do plants have in the forest in the carbon cycle?

Take in carbon and make glucose, starch, cellulose, and other carbs.

6. How is carbon dioxide returned to the atmosphere?

Respiration

7. What happens when primary and secondary consumers die?

Organic matter enters the soil through decay.

8. What do detritus feeders contribute to the carbon cycle?

Return carbon to the atmosphere through respiration.

9. What is a fossil fuel?

Fuels formed by natural processes such as decomposition of dead organisms.

10. How does carbon get in the oceans?

Carbon dissolves and combines with calcium into shells of animals; shells

decay make limestone;
 Carbon released from limestone back to air.
 BIOGEOCHEMICAL CYCLES

Directions: Color and make a key for each of the following cycles. Answer the questions as you read
about each cycle.

The Nitrogen Cycle

1. What percent of the air is nitrogen?

Air is 78 percent nitrogen.

2. Why is nitrogen essential to life?

Nitrogen is essential for all living things because it is a major part of amino acids, which are the
building blocks of proteins and of nucleic acids such as DNA, which transfers genetic information to
subsequent generations of organisms.

3. How do plants and animals get nitrogen if not from the atmosphere?
Nitrogen fixation, bacteria into ammonia, a form of nitrogen usable by plants. When animals
eat the plants, they acquire usable nitrogen compounds.
4. What are nitrogen fixing bacteria?

Nitrogen-fixing bacteria are microorganisms present in the soil or in plant roots that change
nitrogen gases from the atmosphere into solid nitrogen compounds that plants can use in the soil.

5. What is a major reservoir for ammonia?

Soil

6. Why do herbivores need nitrogen?

Herbivores need nitrogen in order to make proteins. Nitrogen is part of amino acids, which are
the building blocks of proteins.

7. What is denitrification?

Denitrification is a microbially facilitated process where nitrate (NO3−) is reduced and ultimately
producesmolecular nitrogen (N2) through a series of intermediate gaseous nitrogen oxide products.
 BIOGEOCHEMICAL CYCLES

Directions: Color and make a key for each of the following cycles. Answer the questions as you read
about each cycle.

The Phosphorous Cycle

1. Why is phosphorus an important biological molecule?

Because it is a component in ATP and coenzyme NADP, which are used in important cellular
processes including photosynthesis. It can also be found in sugar-phosphate backbone of nucleic
acids, and is an essential element of phospholipids, making up the cell membrane.

2. What happens to phosphorus that erodes from rock and soil?

Water erodes rock and soil containing phosphorus, which dissolves in the water. The
phosphorus joins with the oxygen to form phosphate.
3. How are phosphates incorporated into the organic molecules in plants and animals?

Plants absorb phosphates through the water, which is concentrated into plant tissue. Animals
gain phosphates from the plants.

4. What happens to the phosphates when plants and animals die?

Phosphates return to the water through plant and animal waste.

5. What happens to the phosphorus that is carried by runoff to the oceans?

The phosphorus is in the form of phosphates, much of which in concentrated in marine

sediment.

6. How are phosphates incorporated into the organic molecules in aquatic plants and animals?

Turn phosphate into organic compounds

7. What is different about the phosphorous cycle as compared to the water, carbon and nitrogen
cycles?

The phosphorus cycle is different compared to the water, carbon, and nitrogen cycle because
it cannot be found in the gas state. Phosphorus is only found in land, water, and sediment. The
phosphorus cycle is a bio-geochemical cycle that describes the movement of phosphorus through the
lithosphere, hydrosphere, and biosphere. The other cycle is the process by which it is converted
between its various chemical form. Phosphorus has small particles that only sometime go up into the
atmosphere and contribute to acid rain but other than that phosphorus stays in and on land, sea, and
sediment.
 Compare/Contrast Table

Ten Major Biomes

Use the book to fill in the table

Biomes Precipitatio Temperatur Soil Diversity Tress Gasses

n e

Tropical High Hot Poor High Dense Sparse

Rain Forest

Tropical Dry Variable Mild Rich Moderate Medium Medium

Forest

Tropical Variable Mild Clay Moderate Sparse Dense

Savanna

Desert Low Variable Poor Moderate Sparse Sparse

Temperate Moderate Summer Hot Rich Moderate Medium Dense

Grassland

Temperate Summer
Woodland Low, Winter, Summer Hot Poor Low Medium Medium
and Moderate
Shrubland

Temperate Summer
Forest Moderate Moderate, Rich High Dense Sparse
Winter Cold

Northwest
Coniferous High Summer Rocky Low Dense Sparse
Forest Mild, Winter Acidic
Cold

Boreal Summer
Forest Moderate Mild, Winter Poor Acidic Moderate Dense Sparse
Cool
Tundra Summer
Low Mild, Winter Poor Low Absent Medium
Cold