The Carbon Cycle
Earth’s system for recycling carbon atoms between the atmosphere, oceans, land (biosphere, pedosphere), and Earth’s interior (geosphere), crucial for life and climate, involving fast processes like photosynthesis/respiration and slow ones like rock formation. Carbon moves from air to plants (photosynthesis), to animals (eating plants), back to air (respiration, decomposition), into soils, oceans, and long-term geological storage as rocks and fossil fuels, with human burning of fossil fuels rapidly adding CO2 to the atmosphere.