What is the Carbon Cycle?

You are probably wondering what is Carbon? What do we have to do with the Carbon Cycle? And where can we find it? Here is where you can find your answers. The Carbon Cycle is made up of many different parts. Some being Respiration and Photosynthesis. Carbon can be found anywhere. Some things store it (Plants, humans, animals, rocks, trees, shells and fossil fuels), some make oxygen (Trees and plants) and some (Lakes, rivers and the ocean) dissolve it.

When you breath out you remove oxygen from the air. When you breath out, you release Carbon Dioxide into the air. But not only you, animals and fish do it too. But plants and trees help us turn the Carbon Dioxide back to oxygen. Plants take in Carbon Dioxide and release oxygen. Trees do the same and they both store Carbon Dioxide too.

Photosynthesis is how we get clean air. Land plants and trees are a part of the photosynthesis process, but under the water, ocean animals and plants are doing their part in the photosynthesis process too. Like I said before, Carbon Dioxide gets dissolved in water. Ocean plants store the dissolved Carbon Dioxide and when the ocean animals eat the plants they get some of that Carbon Dioxide to store too. Ocean plants also turn the dissolved Carbon Dioxide back into oxygen. Some sea creatures even use Carbon to make their shells and when they die, their shells dissolve again.

When a plant or a animal dies it releases all of the Carbon it has stored in its life. Then wherever it's left, it starts to decompose and slowly become part of the soil beneath it. After a long period of time the decomposed plants or animals compact and could become fossil fuels. Such as Coal, Oil or Gas.

Humans make a lot of Carbon Dioxide. Did you know we breath at least five litres of air a minute ! Thats a lot of Carbon Dioxide! But there are lots of other things we do that produce Carbon. Like when we burn trees, use cars or have factories. They all produce Carbon. Also we when we die we release all of the Carbon we have stored.

In conclusion, the Carbon Cycle is very important to the way we live. But it is not just us that makes Carbon, so even if humans never existed, there would still be a Carbon Cycle.