Introduction  (Page 17/2)

Introduction

You may have heard the word 'cycle' many times before. Think for example of the word 'bicycle' or the regular 'cycle tests' that you may have at school. A cycle is a series of events that repeats itself. In the case of a bicycle, the wheel turns through a full circle before beginning the motion again, while cycle tests happen regularly, normally every week or every two weeks. Because a cycle repeats itself, it doesn't have a beginning or an end.

Our Earth is a closed system . This means that it can exchange energy with its surroundings (i.e. the rest of the solar system), but no new matter is brought into the system. For this reason, it is important that all the elements and molecules on Earth are recycled so that they are never completely used up. In the next two sections, we are going to take a closer look at two cycles that are very important for life on Earth. They are the water cycle and the nitrogen cycle .

The importance of water

For many people, it is so easy to take water for granted and yet life on Earth would not exist were it not for this extraordinary compound. Not only is it believed that the first forms of life actually started in water, but most of the cells in living organisms contain between 70% and 95% water. Here in the cells, water acts as a solvent and helps to transport vital materials such as food and oxygen to where they are needed, and also removes waste products such as carbon dioxide and ammonia from the body. For many animals and plants, water is their home. Think for example of fish and amphibians that live either all or part of the time in rivers, dams and the oceans. In other words, if water did not exist, life as we know it would not be possible.

Apart from allowing life to exist, water also has a number of other functions. Water shapes the landscape around us by wearing away at rocks and also transports and deposits sediments on floodplains and along coastal regions. Water also plays a very important role in helping to regulate Earth's climate. We will discuss this again later in the chapter. As humans we use water in our homes, in industry, in mining, irrigation and even as a source of electricitiy in hydro-electric schemes. In fact, if we were able to view Earth from space, we would see that almost three quarters of our planet's surface is covered in water. It is because of this that Earth is sometimes called the 'Blue Planet'. Most of this water is stored in the oceans, with the rest found in ice (e.g. glaciers), groundwater (e.g. boreholes), surface water (e.g. rivers, lakes, estuaries, dams) and in the atmosphere as clouds and water vapour.