Importance of the Carbon Cycle

The process that it integrates on Earth is called the carbon cycle, a process that is extraordinarily important for the development of life. Indeed, it is important to consider that the living beings They are largely composed of carbon and feed on it in various ways. Without the establishment of this cycle, life would have been impossible on the planet and from this perspective its importance must be understood. The carbon cycle can be conceived, therefore, as all the chemical operations in which this element intervenes and in which all existing living beings actively participate..

He carbon cycle starts in the vegetables and in some photosynthetic bacteria, when there is a capture of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. These living beings take this gas in order to produce their own food in conjunction with water and with the energy of the sun. In this way, there is a process that forms carbohydrates, leaving the oxygen we breathe as "waste". Plants are in turn engulfed by first-order consumer animals, animals that obtain from this way carbohydrates that mean chemical energy for the various metabolic processes they need. Finally, when living beings die, there is a decomposition process carried out by special organisms, the so-called

decomposers (bacteria and fungi) that cause the carbon left in the remains to return to the earth; On the other hand, in daily breathing there is a constant elimination of carbon dioxide at the atmosphere, gas that will later be used for the cycle to start again with the work of the organisms producers.

As we can see, the process is essential for life, for its maintenance in all its complexity. Certainly, the same as we know it today had its beginning with organisms capable of generating their own food, particularly with vegetables. In effect, it is the plants that largely made possible the composition of the atmosphere with greater oxygen and the consequent appearance of more complex animals that could breathe themselves and feed on the carbohydrates that were synthesized inside the floors. All living beings are therefore composed of carbon and need to feed on compounds in which carbon exists. carbon, compounds that they must consume from other living beings or, as in the case of plants, synthesize on their own themselves.

Contributions of the transformation

The noble and always well-balanced carbon appeared millions of years ago as the perfect base element for the constitution of all organic molecules, making It is possible that, in turn, these were organized in such a way that they gave rise to life, not only as a consequence of the particular properties that this element possesses, but also also as a product of its availability as a natural resource, which has been sustained over time through the ability of carbon to be used for various functions and chemical reactions, being present in each of the existing media and the most basic states of matter, a phenomenon that allows its use and return cyclically constant.

Living organisms, being structurally composed for the most part by organic substances, are immersed in the constant dynamics of transformations experienced by carbon within its cycle, either as part of the residual products discarded by living beings, both organic as inorganic, or as an absolute return to the environment of all the elements that made up the individual after his death and the respective processes of his decomposition. This fact has allowed, throughout the entire existence of life on Earth, the possibility of having the necessary amount of carbon for the conformation of all the species, which together with the great availability of this element also in terms of its quantity, allowed the increase of the populations of all the species and in each one of the biomes.

usable energy

From the organic compounds accumulated underground by the decomposition of living beings over millennia, humanity has been able to obtain a great variety of products and, most especially, the energy source on which its own progress has been sustained during the last century and a half of its history, generating both energy and economic dependence from which it has not been easy to get rid of, despite all the efforts and projects towards the implementation of less polluting ways of life and technologies, through which it is possible to reduce human intervention on the environment. carbon cycle.

The use of fossil fuels, as substances obtained from petroleum have been collectively called, has resulted in the massive and expansive recovery of carbon to the surface, from the slowest phase of its cycle, the depths of the earth and from substances in variable state, thus abruptly increasing the carbon index present in the most direct phases of its cycle, which has represented a considerable imbalance of the same and therefore, of all the rest of the terrestrial dynamics, despite the great industrial and technological use that has been developed around this element.

of respiration and other gases

The atmosphere is also an important reserve of carbon, since as part of its biogeochemical cycle it combines with oxygen to generate carbon dioxide in a gaseous state. This compound in turn has multiple origins through: 1) aerobic respiration of living beings; 2) combustion processes; 3) intestinal gases derived from their digestive processes; 4) the emission of residual gases from industrial processes; 4) the release of gases by the processes of decomposition of organic matter.

As can be seen with the naked eye, most of the events from which carbon dioxide is obtained present a high vulnerability of being modifiable by action. human being, as it has been happening since the beginning of the industrial era, increasing more and more the quantity of this gas present in the atmosphere, which produces as direct consequence of the increase in the normal greenhouse effect that this layer provides us, due to the atmospheric opacation that this excess carbon produces, becoming a priority problem to be solved within the next few years and in the most immediate and efficient way possible, if you really want to reverse the effects of climate change that we have induced

References

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