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Ecosystem services are ecologically mediated functional processes essential to sustaining healthy human societies. [6] Water provision and filtration, production of biomass in forestry, agriculture, and fisheries, and removal of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide (CO 2) from the atmosphere are examples of ecosystem services essential to public health and economic opportunity.
The predominant difference between the two is that one process is naturally-occurring and one is human-driven. Biodegradable material is capable of decomposing without an oxygen source (anaerobically) into carbon dioxide, water, and biomass, but the timeline is not very specifically defined.
The biotic environment includes genes, cells, organisms, members of the same species (conspecifics) and other species that share a habitat. [172] The distinction between external and internal environments, however, is an abstraction parsing life and environment into units or facts that are inseparable in reality.
The biotic compartment is the biosphere and the abiotic compartments are the atmosphere, lithosphere and hydrosphere. For example, in the carbon cycle, atmospheric carbon dioxide is absorbed by plants through photosynthesis , which converts it into organic compounds that are used by organisms for energy and growth.
Biotic materials in soil include humic substances such as humic acids, fulvic acids and humin. Some biotic material may not be considered to be organic matter if it is low in organic compounds , such as a clam 's shell, which is an essential component of the exoskeleton of bivalve mollusks made of calcium carbonate ( CaCO 3 ), but contains ...
The stratopause, which is the boundary between the stratosphere and mesosphere, typically is at 50 to 55 km (31 to 34 mi; 164,000 to 180,000 ft). Troposphere: The troposphere begins at the surface and extends to between 7 km (23,000 ft) at the poles and 17 km (56,000 ft) at the equator, with some variation due to weather. The troposphere is ...
Abiotic components include physical conditions and non-living resources that affect living organisms in terms of growth, maintenance, and reproduction. Resources are distinguished as substances or objects in the environment required by one organism and consumed or otherwise made unavailable for use by other organisms.
Natural resources can be a substantial part of a country's wealth; [7] however, a sudden inflow of money caused by a resource extraction boom can create social problems including inflation harming other industries ("Dutch disease") and corruption, leading to inequality and underdevelopment, this is known as the "resource curse".