Climate effects and biogeochemical cycles in aquatic ecosystems

¶ … aquatic system • Describe climate affects selected ecosystem. • Explain, based laws thermodynamics, energy flows selected ecosystem. • Examine matter transported selected ecosystem due biogeochemical cycles, carbon, hydrologic, nitrogen, phosphorus.

Aquatic ecosystems

Aquatic ecosystems are mainly responsible for assisting energy transfers across the planet and for making it possible for all life on earth to exist. Depending on the area where it is located and on the substances that it contains, a body of water can have more or less living beings in it. Climate has a strong impact on water and on the organisms that directly depend on it. Climate change has had a severe effect on bodies of water all around the planet and this is obvious especially when considering melting glaciers and the energy that they release.

Thermohaline circulation is one of the most important circulation systems present on the planet and it is largely in charge of controlling temperatures all across the globe. This system turns Earth's oceans into a global system by transporting and cooling water from the Atlantic Ocean to the poles. Cold water sinks and most of it accumulates in the Southern Ocean and while it travels around the world it transports both energy in the form of heat and matter in the form of diverse gases and solid bodies.

The Termohaline circulation is one of the principal concepts controlling the planet's temperature. Global warming caused by humanity can thus lead to it being disrupted and thus unable to regulate the amount of sea ice present at the poles. If the Termohaline circulation is stopped this would have terrible consequences on Europe, considering that this system is believed to be largely in charge of guaranteeing that weather on the continent remains temperate.

Water was initially populated by diverse forms of simple organisms and while some remained anaerobic, some started to use oxygen and light and thus became photosynthetic. "Yet others became parasitic, using plants and oxygen as energy sources; they ultimately developed into animals" (Franks 5).

Depending on the amount of algae that accumulate in a body of water, photosynthetic organisms are more or less likely to survive. In a body of water dominated by algae photosynthetic organisms are likely to be extinct. In contrast, they are probable to thrive in conditions where they have access to sufficient light and oxygen.