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The biosphere (from Ancient Greek βίος (bíos) 'life' and σφαῖρα (sphaîra) 'sphere'), also called the ecosphere (from Ancient Greek οἶκος (oîkos) 'settlement, house' and σφαῖρα (sphaîra) 'sphere'), is the worldwide sum of all ecosystems.
J.B. Lamarck defined the term biosphere. When modern biologists mention the biosphere they usually mean the best part of the Earth's crust, which is the lithosphere and hydrosphere, and of the lower parts of the Earth's lower parts, which is the troposphere. All these together and the living organisms make up the biosphere.
Several ecological factors may contribute to the gradient, but the ultimate factor behind many of them is the greater mean temperature at the equator compared to that at the poles. [ 85 ] Even though terrestrial biodiversity declines from the equator to the poles, [ 86 ] some studies claim that this characteristic is unverified in aquatic ...
Biogeographic realms are characterized by the evolutionary history of the organisms they contain. They are distinct from biomes, also known as major habitat types, which are divisions of the Earth's surface based on life form, or the adaptation of animals, fungi, micro-organisms and plants to climatic, soil, and other conditions
The carbon cycle is the biogeochemical cycle by which carbon is exchanged among the biosphere, pedosphere, geosphere, hydrosphere, and atmosphere of the Earth. The oxygen cycle is the movement of oxygen within and between its three main reservoirs: the atmosphere, the biosphere, and the lithosphere.
Anthropogenic biomes (v1 from Ellis & Ramankutty (2008)). Anthropogenic biomes, also known as anthromes, human biomes or intensive land-use biome, describe the terrestrial biosphere in its contemporary, human-altered form using global ecosystem units defined by global patterns of sustained direct human interaction with ecosystems.
The anthroposphere can be viewed as a human-generated equivalent to the biosphere. While the biosphere is the total biomass of the Earth and its interaction with its systems, the anthroposphere is the total mass of human-generated systems and materials, including the human population, and its interaction with the Earth's systems.
An aquatic ecosystem is an ecosystem found in and around a body of water, in contrast to land-based terrestrial ecosystems.Aquatic ecosystems contain communities of organisms—aquatic life—that are dependent on each other and on their environment.