THURSDAY:

Terrestrial Phosphorus Exchange: only one that doesnt change

valence states for practice purposes (in env does everything by
absorption or external covalent bonds)
Does not have a gas vapor stage so once it starts out of the
mountains, it is on a one way trip to the ocean. It only gets put back
to the environment after being buried for thousands of years and
through the process of tectonic plate movement.
Mountains (mechanical and chemical weathering)
Soil Systems: Incorporation of phosphorus into terrestrial
biomass and its return to the soil system through
decomposition
Rivers: Exchange reactions between groundwater and soil
particles
Lakes: Cycling in freshwater lakes
Estuaries: Transport through estuaries to the oceans of both
particulate and dissolved P
RED TIDES - Algal blooms off of Naples: aerosols blown in off the
water were irritating
Dead fish off the coast turns out that when one starts
looking at raw records, that because of the history of Florida
being an old marine area, there were 3 areas that made a lot
of the phosphate fertilizer
With these phosphate mines and quarries (in the 1905s, there
was not a lot of regulation), and not much treatment, they
would run off the numerous rivers and into the ocean
What they depended on was phosphorous leaking out and
then interacting with a small amount of iron to help stimulate
the growth (iron is the limiting nutrient)
There are organic and inorganic phosphorous forms and soluble
as well as insoluble forms
Organic PO4 is tied into a bunch of organic molecules
Phosphorous cycle: our friend P
Animals and plants with phosphorous complexes in them
They lose phosphorous through excretion and urea (some of
the uric acid derivatives have phosphate attached) and then
they have the dissolved organic P.
Once they die, you have dead organic P decomposed and it
becomes dissolved orthophosphate, which can be used by
plants and bacteria.
Phosphorous can get back to the land by birds picking up fish
eating them and excreting their waste products
Bears only eat about 20-30% of the salmon, toss it into the
woods, and then it gets back to the ground
 o When analyzed in their carbon-13 tracers, trees near
these feeding sites look like marine trees because of
this
Carbon as you go down in pH, there is more sequestration,
and as you go up in pH, there is more release
Phosphorous when we are at high redox potential (oxidized
+500, +250) there is very little mobilization of phosphorous (release)
BUT, as we get lower pH (5) and lower redox potential (0 to
-200) you get more release or movement
In more acidic reduced sediments, phosphorous goes up
significantly biologic activity is permitted.
ONE OF THE THINGS THAT KEEPS ALL THESE SYSTEM EDURING,
IS THE FACT THAT THEY HAVE TIDAL FLUX:
As the tide rises and falls, it literally acts as a hydraulic pump
that helps them move stuff up and down (especially in the
sediments)
Tidal cycles can rise and fall without a lot of incoming water
Look at the figures in the book and follow them with the notes
there should be 4 figures?
Organic Nitrogen leaves the plant through decomposition,
photosynthate leakage (10% of their hourly photosynthate) they
think that this is so:
Theres a cost-benefit ratio of having that membrane on the
outside (some plants are tighter, and some plants are leakier
than others)
Dimethyl sulfide accused of having bad effects, but it is
perfectly natural in the environment
The oceans produce a huge amount of DMS
Wetland Plant Adaptations: a lot of interactive feedback between
species and the environment
They are highly productive at primary and secondary levels
and have a very high total diversity.
Usually dependent on a single dominant and keystone
producer species. Two or three sub-dominant primary
producers are present and fill important niches. why does it
work in these areas and not others?
o Tropical seagrass Thalassia testudinum (turtle grass)
o Temperate seagrass Zostera marina can suffer a
wide variety of fluctuations
o Salt marsh Spartina alterniflora can suffer a wide
variety of fluctuations
o Mangrove Rhizophora mangle (red mangrove)
 Common characteristic of these dominant species is high
productivity, tolerance of environmental variation, and a
robust ability to stabilize sediment. None of the sub-dominant
producers have the sediment stabilizing capability. The
system will collapse without the dominant species.
Wile all of these keystone species are highly resilient to
natural temperature and salinity stress, seagrasses are the
most susceptible to anthropogenic stresses (due to turbidity)
Pacific they are more spread out (seagrasses, salt marshes,
and mangroves)
Why in the Pacific do you have two of the three characters,
but not the third?
In Australia you will have mangroves 80 miles away the
reef track will come up
Average species lasts about 1 million years one of the things
that the diversity was thought to be important to was giving stability
to ecosystems
If something happened to one of the major species, there
would be something else to take their place
Oysters have been about as far back as Calcium carbonate
records go some things have genomes that have been very
plastic and keep going, but some have stayed as solid as a
rock and dont change (why, is very difficult to explain)
HOWEVER, most of these ecosystems have remained stable
because their keystone species is very tolerant of
environmental change (not the diversity)
o Ex: tropical reef has a large amount of species with a
large amount of links and complex food webs they
thought this made them stable. However, if the
weather becomes too mild and the temperature
increases, it can produce a very hot environment for the
corals and get easily stressed bleaching
(zooxanthellae are kicked out)
o If the stress is relieved quickly, the zooxanthellae can
come back and repopulate the corals
o These ecosystems may have a large amount of diversity
BECAUSE the environment is relatively stable, so they
are able to go through multiple rounds of evolution (can
support a wide variety of organisms because the
environment is tolerant of a wide variety of needs)
o Urithermal wide temperature tolerances (in their
range)
 o Animals that coexist in a varying environment have
similar adaptations because they have to survive the
same fluctuations
SIDES:
Phosphorus fertilizer comes from old marine fish deposits