Human Impact on Biogeochemical Cycles Worksheet

Your neighbor faithfully applies fertilizer to his lawn to ensure beautiful, healthy green grass. Explain how your neighbor’s fertilizing habit affects at least one nutrient cycle. The fertilizer affects the nitrogen cycle. This is because fertilizers add more nitrogen in the soil hence increasing more nitrogen in the carbon cycle. Too much nitrogen in the soil burns the existing nutrients hence requiring crop rotation. In this case, it is impossible for the neighbor to practice crop rotation as the grass will be permanently there. Therefore, the main challenge is that adding fertilizer without planting large consumers of nitrogen such as corn. On the other hand, excess nitrogen in the soil leads to excess burning and salt concentration. As the level of mineral salts increase, the excess minerals take away water from the plants because there is a high concentration of mineral salts in the soil than in the plant. Therefore, water moves through osmosis from a point of lower concentration to a high concentration hence affects the water cycle which should be from the soil to the plant and not the other way around (Conradin, 2017). 2. Your friend commutes to work every day by driving a standard gasoline-powered car. Explain how your friend’s commute affects one or more nutrient cycles. The use of personal vehicles has gradually increased in the recent past where people prefer their own mean instead of public ones. However, with the increased vehicle ownership increasing, there has been a directly corresponding increase in the level of carbon monoxide emitted in to the environment. Compared to other form of cars such as electronic and hybrid engines who also produce considerable levels of carbon monoxide, gasoline cars produce even more toxic substances. Therefore, gasoline powered cars, apart from carbon monoxide, releases other wastes resulting from incomplete gasoline reactions such as carbon dioxide, nitrogen oxides, and other toxic materials. An overall increase in the level of these toxic products, especially carbon monoxide and dioxide affect the air components such as nitrogen which are essential in the balance of the ecosystem. Therefore, a daily use of gasoline powered car by my friend affects the amount of nitrogen in the air, hence is an essential factor affecting the naturally occurring nutrient cycle. 3. Urban areas typically have lots of pavement and compacted soils. Explain how these impermeable surfaces affect at least one aspect of the hydrologic cycle Hydrologic cycle refers to the process in which water is absorbed into the ground and then released into the air from the ground in form of steam generated through evaporation. In a case where urban areas typically build lots of pavement and compacted soils, a resulting impermeable surface is developed which prevents the water from penetrating into the ground when it rains. This has been identified as the major cause of flooding and drainage challenges in the urban areas as the majority of the water flows instead of being drained into the ground. Consequently, as the drainage systems cannot hold the excess water, it runs out on the road affecting the smooth movement of vehicles and usually causes accidents in smooth tarmacked roads. On the other hand, all of the water in the drainage systems are directed to streams or rivers which causes overflooding and destruction of property and in some instances loss of life. Besides, there is a risk of sewages overflowing and mixing with clean rain water, hence causing water pollution (Howard, 2016).