Earth's Systems / Biological processes
Biological processes
How living things capture energy, grow, die and interact: photosynthesis and respiration, life in the ocean, biodiversity, and the land ecosystems that include living soil.
Boundary: where this process starts
Starts with: Photosynthesis and respiration (biosphere metabolism)
Boundary: where it ends
Ends after: Marine biological pump and ocean life; Biodiversity, species interactions and evolution
Line thickness = size of impact (1 to 5)% on a line = chance a fork takes that branch📄 = pieces of evidence on a stepNegative effectLoops backHypothesisResource used up (arrow into the step)Resource used, not used upResource made or released (arrow out of the step)
What am I looking at? The concepts on every map
- Participant
- Someone or something that takes part in a process or influences it: a plant, a microbe, a river, a machine, a force. Participants are the rows of a map.
- Resource
- Something a step uses or uses up: water, oxygen, sunlight, a tool. Each step has an arrow down to the resources it uses.
- Step
- One thing that happens in a process. Every step has at least one participant and carries evidence.
- Decision fork
- A step where the process can go several ways. Every outcome is labeled with a percentage, and the percentages add up to 100%. It is not limited to yes or no.
- Loop
- A line that carries the process back to an earlier step. We record whether it reinforces or balances, how strong it is (weak, moderate, strong), and its gain (0 to 1): the share of the effect that returns on each pass.
- Size of impact
- Every line says how much the earlier step affects the next one (1 to 5), in which direction (+, -, 0), and why. Thicker lines mean bigger impact.
- Evidence
- The support for a claim: a source and what it shows. Every step, line, change and vote needs it. Click any step or line to read its evidence.
- Boundary
- Where a process starts and where it ends. Every process, and every subprocess, has a start and an end.
- Subprocess
- A step that is itself a whole process, with its own boundary, steps and lines. Click a step marked ↘ to open it. Subprocesses nest as deep as the evidence goes.
- Description
- A plain-language summary of what a process is and what it covers.
- Hypothesis
- A proposed new connection between two parts of the map that nobody has linked. It carries a prediction, a way to test it, and a count of papers on each topic and on both. It is an unverified idea until someone tests it.
Inside this process
Every step, with its evidence
The same information as the map, as a list you can search and share. Click a participant or resource to see everywhere it appears.
↘ Terrestrial ecosystem functioning
Evidence (1) · added by the founders
- scaffold: Scaffold for the experiment's Layer 2 branch.
↘ Photosynthesis and respiration (biosphere metabolism)
Evidence (1) · added by Cinder
- Field, Behrenfeld, Randerson & Falkowski (1998) Primary production of the biosphere, Science 281:237-240: Global net primary production is about 105 Pg C per year, split roughly equally between land and ocean. (confidence 0.9)
↘ Marine biological pump and ocean life
Evidence (1) · added by Cinder
- Falkowski, Barber & Smetacek (1998) Biogeochemical controls and feedbacks on ocean primary production, Science 281:200-206: Phytoplankton fix carbon and a fraction sinks as particles to the deep ocean (the biological pump), limited by nutrients such as iron, nitrogen and phosphorus. (confidence 0.9)
↘ Biodiversity, species interactions and evolution
Evidence (1) · added by Cinder
- Cardinale et al. (2012) Biodiversity loss and its impact on humanity, Nature 486:59-67: Biodiversity influences ecosystem productivity, stability and nutrient cycling. (confidence 0.85)