Q.Give an account of ecosystem services with reference to carbon fixation and oxygen release.
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Start your 14-day free trial to unlock the full solution →[!ANSWER] Ecosystem services are the many benefits that plant communities and the wider ecosystems they form provide to the environment and to human life, and among the most important of these are pollination, carbon fixation, and oxygen release — both of the latter two arising directly from photosynthesis.
Ecosystem services in general
Ecosystem services are typically delivered continuously by ordinary, healthy plant communities, often without any deliberate human effort or payment, which is precisely why they tend to be taken for granted even though both natural ecosystems and human societies depend heavily on them. Pollination is one clear example: a very large proportion of flowering plants, including many crop species humans rely on for food, cannot set seed or fruit without their flowers being pollinated by animal pollinators such as bees, butterflies, and certain birds. By offering nectar and pollen as a reward, plants sustain stable pollinator populations, and in return those pollinators enable the reproduction of both wild plant species and cultivated crops — a mutually dependent relationship in which each side's survival supports the other's.
Carbon fixation
During photosynthesis, green plants absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and use it, together with water and light energy, to build organic compounds (such as sugars) within their own tissues. In doing so, plants effectively lock away, or "fix," carbon that would otherwise remain in the atmosphere as a greenhouse gas. Carried out across entire forests, grasslands, and other plant communities on a global scale, this continuous fixation of atmospheric carbon dioxide is one of the most important natural processes moderating the level of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, and it plays a significant role in mitigating the pace of climate change. The carbon fixed in this way is stored in plant tissue — in trunks, roots, leaves, and eventually in soil organic matter — for as long as that plant material persists, making healthy, extensive plant cover a genuine long-term carbon store as well as an ongoing carbon-removal process.
Oxygen release
Photosynthesis does not only fix carbon; it also releases oxygen as a direct byproduct of the chemical process by which plants convert carbon dioxide and water into organic compounds using light energy. This continuously replenished atmospheric oxygen is what sustains the aerobic respiration of virtually all animal and plant life on Earth, humans included, since aerobic respiration itself requires a steady supply of oxygen to release energy from food. Without the ongoing oxygen output of plant communities worldwide, the atmospheric oxygen level that supports nearly all complex life could not be maintained.
Why these services need protection …
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