What Is the Carbon Cycle? Photosynthesis, Decomposition, Respiration and Combustion - Earth How (2024)

Carbon cycles from the atmosphere into plants and living things. For example, carbon is a pollutant in the atmosphere as carbon dioxide.

But it’s also the most important building block for all living things including glucose.

Over millions of years, carbon can get re-purposed into hydrocarbons. This is the long-term carbon cycle.

So, carbon takes up various forms: glucose in plants, carbon dioxide in the air, and hydrocarbons like coal.

But today, we’ll talk about the short-term carbon cycle that just takes days, months, or years for carbon to cycle through the environment.

1. Photosynthesis

Plants pull carbon dioxide out of the air through photosynthesis. Even though carbon dioxide makes up less than 1% of the atmosphere, it plays a major role in living things.

With CO₂ and H₂O in the atmosphere, photosynthesis produces sugars like glucose. This is the plant material that plants synthesize on their own.

If you have the right conditions, this process can repeat for centuries. Not only does photosynthesis pull carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere, but it fuels all living things as a source of energy.

2. Decomposition

By mostly using sunlight, water, and carbon dioxide, plants can grow. In turn, animals consume food for energy using O₂ and giving off CO₂. Alternatively, they die, decay, and decompose repeating for millions of years.

Decomposition is the process of breaking down plants. Over vast periods of time, layers of sediment build on each other. Because of the pressure and heat from within the Earth’s crust, it generates fossil fuels. Much of this happened during the Carboniferous Era.

For example, coal, oil, and natural gas (methane) are some of the common fossil fuels. Over the long term, the decomposition of dead matter generates these fossil fuel products.

Anaerobic decomposition involves bacteria breaking down organic matter such as glucose into CO₂ and methane (CH₄). The nutrient cycle recycles inorganic and organic material in the soil through the process of decomposition. Then, it goes back again through the same process again.

3. Respiration

You and I are both made of carbon. We consume plants. But we also breathe in the air, which has carbon in the form of carbon dioxide.

Animals rely on plants for food, energy, and oxygen. Our cells require oxygen to break down the food we consume through cellular respiration.

Once consumed, carbon dioxide is released into the atmosphere because of cell respiration. In turn, this CO₂ produced from respiring cells can be used in photosynthesis again.

In other words, plants use solar energy to break apart that same carbon dioxide in the air. Through photosynthesis, it uses that same carbon for plant material in turn releasing oxygen again.

4. Combustion

Our cars use the energy released by burning fossil fuels. And carbon is also a pollutant as carbon dioxide.

We extract fossil fuels, combustion involves burning them to release energy. But a by-product of combustion is that it releases carbon dioxide back into the atmosphere. And too much CO2 increases the greenhouse effect.

Because we deplete our oil reserves by adding CO₂ into the air daily, it affects the carbon cycle with an imbalance of oxygen and carbon. Carbon dioxide is one of the greenhouse gases contributing to climate change.

But there is a limit to how much fossil fuels we can extract. Over millions of years, phytoplankton resting on the ocean surface photosynthesizes and takes in CO₂.

Using sunlight creates a molecule called glucose (C6H12O6) and sinks to the bottom of the ocean. Humans discovered these fossil fuels beneath the ocean. We started to drill the ancient plankton, which over millions of years ago, became the oil we use today.

Long-term carbon cycle summary

Today, you’ve learned how carbon cycles from the atmosphere and then into plants and living things. But the distinction between the short-term carbon cycle is that this cycle takes millions of years to come full circle.

Instead of carbon converting into sugars, carbon is re-purposed into fossil fuels like coal. When plants are buried and compacted over millions of years, they become hydrocarbons.

When you drive your gas-powered car, you tap into Earth’s carbon reserves deposited hundreds of million years ago. These fossil fuels are released into the air as carbon dioxide and water vapor.

It may stay in the atmosphere for a while, but eventually, plants consume it during photosynthesis. So that same weight from the tank of gasoline gets converted into wood or plant material by photosynthesis.

What Is the Carbon Cycle?

Carbon is a chemical element that is an essential part of all living organisms. It is found in the bodies of plants, animals, and people.

Carbon dioxide is constantly being released from burning fossil fuels, plants, and animal respiration. The amount of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere affects global warming.

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