What is the carbon cycle? Why is it important? - Answer The carbon cycle is the mouvement of carbon between species, the earth, the atmosphere and oceans.
Without carbon, ecosystems would not function and persist over time. Most exchanges involve the ocean.
What are the crucial processes in the...
Biology 1M03 Exam - McMaster Questions & Answers Latest Updated What is the carbon cycle? Why is it important? - Answer The carbon cycle is the mouvement of carbon between species, the earth, the atmosphere and oceans.
Without carbon, ecosystems would not function and persist over time. Most exchanges involve the ocean.
What are the crucial processes in the carbon cycle? Why are they important? - Answer Cellular respiration and photosynthesis. They cancel each other out so that there isn't too little CO2 (causing a frozen earth) or too much CO2 (causing an increase in the temperature of the earth).
What is the Keeling curve? - Answer The Keeling curve records changing levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere over time.
Variation within a year = seasons
Variation within years = global warming
Extending time scale says more about the global ecosystem than annual CO2 values
Are variation in the carbon cycle normal? - Answer Human activities play an important role in the modern carbon cycle
Variation in levels of CO2 are normal, however when the variation becomes too big, then there is an unusual change.
Carbon isotopes show that much of the CO2 added to air over the past 70 years comes from burning fossil fuels.
How do we know that humans add CO2? - Answer The isotopic composition of atmospheric carbon stock. We (and plants) release a signature isotope, 13C
Explain the relation between food webs and trophic pyramids - Answer Energy and carbon is transferred through ecosystems/food webs. There's an inefficient energy transfer between trophic levels, 10% of biomass is passed on. Why are the energy transfers between trophic levels inefficient? - Answer Energy leaves the organisms through heat
What is the relationship between the nitrogen cycle and the carbon cycle? - Answer Nitrogen influences producers which influences the carbon cycle (producers are the first in the trophic levels, energy/glucose
contains carbon)
Link the molecule with where its most found in its respective cycle:
carbon, nitrogen, phosphorous
air, water, rocks - Answer carbon = water/ocean
nitrogen = air
phosphorous = rocks
What is the relationship between biological diversity and primary production? How does the carbon cycle fit into all of this? - Answer The more biological diversity, the more primary production. If it affects the primary production, then it affects the carbon cycle indirectly because its the root of the trophic levels.
Can you imagine consequences of losing the top predator? What does this mean to conservation of nature? - Answer Cascade of effects; overpopulation etc.
Can you hypothesize how carbon could move (be recycled) two billion years ago? What would be necessary? - Answer Other process not know about, since the nitrogen cycle is intertwined with carbon cycles.
Other types of primary and secondary consumers...
A mix of adaptations of the organisms
What determines the earth's surface temperature? - Answer The principal determinant of Earth's surface
temperature is the angle at which solar radiation strikes the surface.
It explains why its hotter at the equator and colder at the poles.
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