Biosphere

The term BIOSPHERE refers to the totality of life on earth and its interdependency on abiotic environmental factors. It encompasses the interactions between the atmosphere, hydrosphere, and lithosphere to support the entirety of earth's organism through climate (temperature and precipitation), soil formation, hydrology (surface water, ground water, and soil moisture storage), solar energy input (variation in intensity and daily and seasonal accumulation with latitude), and the cycling of energy and nutrients through food webs. The biosphere is the highest level of the ecological hierarchy.

The lowest level of the ecological hierarchy focuses on individual species, with a single individual of a species at the lowest level of classification, and moving upward to a population of that species (the total number of individuals of a species in ...