The green fields, trees, shrubs, ponds, tanks, lakes, rivers, forests, blue sky and the various systems existing in the nature – all constitute the so called environment. Environment creates favorable conditions for the existence and development of creatures. The land is used for meeting the food and raw material supplies, while water is used for drinking, irrigation and power etc. The air is an important part for living creatures as nobody can pass even few minutes without air.
We live at the bottom of a virtual ocean of air that extends upward about 500Km. This thick layer around the earth is called the atmosphere. It is the part full of gases. It absorbs sun rays, cosmic rays and man-made gases etc., and plays important role in keeping the heat balance of the earth through absorption of rays and reemitting back from earth. This balance is maintained with the help of major gases such as nitrogen and oxygen, along with traces of water vapors, carbon dioxide, nitrogen, phosphorus, oxygen, neon, helium, argon, xenon and many other gases. In this paper I should concentrate on carbon …show more content…
All the organic compounds have carbon as the basic component. It is present in food materials as carbohydrates, proteins, fats and amino acids. The basic movement of carbon is from atmospheric reservoir to producers, to consumers and from both these groups to decomposers and then back to atmosphere. The main source of all carbon found in living organisms is carbon dioxide and dissolved carbon dioxide in water. In atmosphere the concentration of carbon dioxide should be 0.03-0.04% in natural way but due to industries and other sources this percentage is increasing. During photosynthesis plants utilize carbon dioxide to form carbohydrate and release oxygen in presence of sun light. This oxygen in utilized by animals. Carbon serves a dual purpose for organisms, it is a structural component of organic molecules, and chemical bonds in carbon compounds provide metabolic energy. The carbon cycle begins with photosynthetic organisms taking up carbon dioxide (CO2). Once a carbon atom is incorporated into organic compounds, its path to recycling may be very quick or extremely slow. Imagine for a moment what happens to a simple sugar molecule you swallow in a glass of fruit juice. The sugar molecule is absorbed into your bloodstream, where it is made available to your cells for cellular respiration or for making more complex biomolecules. If it is used in respiration, you may exhale the same carbon atom as CO2 in an hour or less,