Biogeochemical Cycles

A biogeochemical cycle shows us how a certain element or molecule moves throughout the biotic and abiotic parts of an ecosystem.  

The four biogeochemical cycles we will study are: the water cycle, the carbon cycle, the nitrogen cycle and the phosphorus cycle.

Key Vocab:

Abiotic:  Nonliving (e.g. rocks, clouds, and soil are all abiotic factors of an ecosystem)

Biotic: Living: (e.g. trees, humans, animals, bacteria and fungi are all biotic factors of an ecosystem).

Reservoir:  A place where the element or molecule is stored for a long period of time (e.g. in the water cycle, clouds are consider reservoirs of water).

Big Idea:

Matter cannot be created or destroyed, it can only change form.  This is true for living things as well.  Every single atom that makes up your body came from something else (your food and the air you breathed).  Before it was an atom that made up your food (let's say a hamburger) , it was an atom that made up something else (the grass that the cow ate).  When we study biogeochemical cycles, we are trying to figure out where the atoms that make up a certain thing (a rock, an organism, a cloud, etc) came from and where they will go.