ENV100H1 Lecture Notes - Lecture 12: Carbon Sink, Geosphere, Water Cycle

• School: UTSG
• Department: School of Environment
• Course: ENV100H1
• Professor: Barbara Murck

Document Summary

Substances move among reservoirs and may take several chemical forms. Residence time in these reservoirs may be any time frame. Size of reservoirs and rate of cycling varies in different ecosystems and over time. Size of reservoirs and rate of cycling can be affected by human activities. Source that leads into reservoir: material moving from a to b. Flux rate at which substance moves through the system. Number of water molecules are more or less fixed: just moving around various kinds of reservoirs. What are the important reservoirs: big ones, ones that have huge influence on living processes, etc. What scales (temporal and spatial) do these cycles function on: rate of co2 is what is important in the last 100 years, massive uptake in co2, really important. Water is both a participant in and the main transport medium for environmental processes. Presence or absence of water has a big impact on other biogeochemical cycles: depend on it as.