he Earth's Spheres
...sphere is through pollution. Pollutants are dispersed through cities, industrial areas or waste sites. Man also often busy wastes directly in the ground, this can cause serious contamination. Therefore we need to take care of the lithosphere before it’s too polluted for man to use. The second sphere to be discussed is the hydrosphere. This sphere takes up 71% of the Earth’s surface. The majority of the water in the hydrosphere is salty (97%), and a very small percent is fresh water. Also, most of the freshwater on Earth is in the solid form as glaciers or polar ice caps. The hydrosphere is so important as it is essential in all the other spheres. It is the basis of life for those in the biosphere, it transfers energy with movement out of/into the atmosphere, and finally, it is one of the main agents of erosion in the lithosphere. Without the hydrosphere there simply would not be an atmosphere, biosphere or lithosphere as it was the basis of creation from the start, beginning with the creation of the atmosphere. Man also interacts with this sphere by removing it from the hydrosphere. Also, again, through pollution. As we pollute the earth, global warming occurs, in turn melting glaciers and polar ice caps, evolving the hydrosphere. Lastly, the Earth’s oceans and lakes are another favorite places to dispose of wastes. Therefore we must be cautious about how we treat the hydrosphere, as it’s essential for our survival so we must not waste or destroy it. This thought was the basis of Benjamin Franklin’s comment “When the wells dry, we know the worth of water.” The third sphere is the atmosphere. It extends “less than 1m below the planet’s surface to more than 10,000km above the planet’s surface.” The atmosphere interacts with the hydrosphere through the hydrological cycle. Also, it protects those organisms in the biosphere from ultraviolet radiation. It can also be an agent of erosion in the lithosphere with something as minor as a breeze or as intense as a tornado. The atmosphere also has many different chemical layers. Each layer also differs in temperature. The layers are the troposphere, stratosphere, mesosphere and thermosphere. See diagram. One way in which man interacts with the atmosphere is through the burning of fossil fuels. This causes depletion of the ozone layer, which results in global warming. Also, man uses the atmosphere as well as our own technology to determine weather reports. This is to our convenience. Finally there is the biosphere. This is the sphere that represents life on Earth. Most of the Earth’s organisms are found 3m below the surface to 30m above the surface and up to 200m in the ocean regions. According to history, “life on Earth occurred between 4.5 and 3.8 billion years ago”. The biosphere, like the atmosphere, can be divided into different sections called biomes. There are 9 major biomes and they are the Taiga, Tundra, Chaparral, ...