Process
Photosynthesis
Using light energy to turn carbon dioxide and water into sugar, releasing oxygen.
Carbon cycle
The movement of carbon among the air, oceans, living things, soils and rocks.Source: NASASource: Field et al., 1998
Process
How Carbon cycle connects
Carbon cycle involves
Process
Cellular respiration
Breaking down sugars and other fuels, mostly in mitochondria, to make ATP.
Carbon cycle is related to
Idea or model
Climate change and living things
Warming is moving species ranges: a 2003 analysis found shifts toward the poles averaging 6.1 km per decade and spring events arriving 2.3 days earlier per decade.
Studied in
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Sources & further reading
The explanations on this page are our own summaries of these sources. Follow a link to read the original; if anything here disagrees with it, the original wins. How we choose and check sources.
The Carbon Cycle (opens the original in a new tab)
NASA Earth Observatory. NASA Science. National Aeronautics and Space Administration.
ReferenceGovernment sourceEducationalPrimary production of the biosphere: integrating terrestrial and oceanic components (opens the original in a new tab)
Field CB, Behrenfeld MJ, Randerson JT, et al. (1998). Science 281:237-240.
Global net primary production of about 105 petagrams of carbon per year, split roughly evenly between land and ocean.
Peer-reviewedPrimary research