1 / 9

Aim: SWBAT explain how humans have disrupted the nitrogen cycle

Aim: SWBAT explain how humans have disrupted the nitrogen cycle. Please Do Now: What kind of Nitrogen is the typical end product of the process of decomposition?. Agenda. Do Now Humans and the Nitrogen Cycle Sick Fish video Quiz time YAY!. Remember.

malise
Télécharger la présentation

Aim: SWBAT explain how humans have disrupted the nitrogen cycle

An Image/Link below is provided (as is) to download presentation Download Policy: Content on the Website is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use and may not be sold / licensed / shared on other websites without getting consent from its author. Content is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use only. Download presentation by click this link. While downloading, if for some reason you are not able to download a presentation, the publisher may have deleted the file from their server. During download, if you can't get a presentation, the file might be deleted by the publisher.

E N D

Presentation Transcript

  1. Aim: SWBAT explain how humans have disrupted the nitrogen cycle Please Do Now: What kind of Nitrogen is the typical end product of the process of decomposition?

  2. Agenda • Do Now • Humans and the Nitrogen Cycle • Sick Fish video • Quiz time YAY!

  3. Remember • Most of the Nitrogen on earth is in the atmosphere, as N2 gas (78% of the air we breathe) • Plants and Animals cannot use this form • For that Nitrogen to get to a form usable by plants (and eventually animals) it must be fixed by Nitrogen fixing bacteria

  4. Is the Nitrogen cycle in balance? • It was, the amount of Nitrogen being fixed out of the atmosphere used to be about equal to the amount that was returned by denitrifying bacteria

  5. What has thrown the Nitrogen cycle out of balance? • About 100 years ago, the Haber-Bosch process was developed to take N2 gas and fix it artificially • The process uses the energy from fossil fuels, and creates ammonia out of air

  6. What has thrown the Nitrogen cycle out of balance? • This extra Nitrogen has been used as fertilizer, to make crops grow better, since plants need lots of Nitrogen • It has allowed us to produce many times more food on earth than would be able to otherwise

  7. Is this bad? • For the environment it is • We fix as much Nitrogen from the atmosphere as all the N fixing bacteria combined now • As a result, N that would not have normally been there is building up in the environment

  8. What are the effects? • Terrestrial (on land): decreased plant biodiversity, more invasive species • Aquatic: Very bad, eutrophication

  9. What is eutrophication? • Eutrophication is the over saturation of an ecosystem with nutrients • This allows for an explosion in the population of small plants and algae • This throws the ecosystem out of balance, sucking O2 out of the water, killing other species of aquatic organisms

More Related