#10/15 What is the biosphere?
How does planet Earth work?
Earth’s biosphere is the area that supports life. The biggest volume is found in the ocean and while that’s not where we live, it’s essential to maintaining planetary stability. Oceans absorb most of the Earth’s heat, regulate carbon and are the source of rain and freshwater.
The portion we live on is the thinnest fabric of Earth’s crust, yet it is subject to a continuous inpouring of new energy from the Sun, which is captured by land plants and eaten by animals.
Because we are quite big and half way up the food chain, animals like us need other wildlife to build ecosystems so we can find enough food to eat.
The biosphere is a remarkable thing. As far as we know there are no other habitable planets in the known universe. We could be the only such organisms to have ever existed. We also have limited space in which to live and are bombarded by the Sun’s energy and an unstoppable force of nature that wants to create chaos and break things down.
That power also creates the patterns that make life. From the spiralling arms of our galaxy to ocean currents and weather systems, there is a form and function to existence, even in the presence of this unimaginable and contrary force.
It’s behind the evolution of all living things and what we end up with is an extraordinary and diverse community of animals that migrate predictably across the planet.
From the way your cells absorb energy, to our behaviour and culture, animals follow routines that are built around the ecosystems we created together and it’s the stable nature of these patterns that makes everything work.
Our biosphere is the end product of all that animals have ever done together, that makes our world habitable. But it’s the fact that animals move that makes them essential. Migration plays a huge role.
