Resilience is important because all communities and ecosystems face hazards such as drought and flooding – risks which are exacerbated by changing climate.
Resilience is a factor influencing adaptive capacity, which in turn is an element of the vulnerability of a system.
Factors that increase resilience include the richness and redundancy of species within the ecosystem.
The source, persistence, and intensity of stressors also impact resilience.
Biosphere
Contains all the planet's living things microorganisms, plants, and animals.
Within the biosphere, living things form ecological communities based on the physical surroundings of an area.
These communities are referred to as biomes.
Deserts, grasslands, and tropical rainforests are three of the many types of biomes that exist within the biosphere.
Atmosphere
Contains all the air in Earth's system.
Extends from less than 1 m below the planet's surface to more than 10,000 km above the planet's surface.
The upper portion of the atmosphere protects the organisms of the biosphere from the sun's ultraviolet radiation.
It also absorbs and emits heat.
When air temperature in the lower portion of this sphere changes, weather occurs.
As air in the lower atmosphere is heated or cooled, it moves around the planet.
The result can be as simple as a breeze or as complex as a tornado.
Hydrosphere
- Contains all the solid, liquid, and gaseous water of the planet.
- Ranges from 10 to 20 kilometers in thickness.
- Extends from Earth's surface downward into the lithosphere and upward into the atmosphere.
- A small portion of the water in the hydrosphere is fresh (non-salty), flowing as precipitation from the atmosphere to the Earth's surface, becoming rivers, streams and groundwater.
- 97% of Earth's water is salty, collecting in the oceans.
- Water near the poles is very cold while water near the equator is very warm.
- Differences in temperature cause water to change physical states.
- Low temperatures at the poles cause water to freeze into a solid such as a polar icecap, a glacier, or an iceberg.
- High temperatures like those found at the equator cause water to evaporate into a gas.
Lithosphere
- Contains all the cold, hard solid land of the planet's crust (surface), the semi-solid land underneath the crust, and the liquid land near the center of the planet.
- The surface of the lithosphere is very uneven.
- The solid, semi-solid, and liquid land of the lithosphere form layers that are physically and chemically different.
- The outermost layer of the lithosphere consists of loose soil rich in nutrients, oxygen, and silicon.
- Beneath that layer lies a very thin, solid crust of oxygen and silicon.
- Next is a thick, semi-solid mantle of oxygen, silicon, iron, and magnesium.
- Below that is a liquid outer core of nickel and iron.
- At the center of Earth is a solid inner core of nickel and iron.
