EVERYDAY SCIENCE

Detailed explanation-1: -Decomposers break apart complex organic materials into more elementary substances: water and carbon dioxide, plus simple compounds containing nitrogen, phosphorus, and calcium. All of these components are substances that plants need to grow.

Detailed explanation-2: -When the decomposers decompose organic material and organisms, they contribute in bringing nutrients into the soil, continuing the nitrogen and carbon cycles. Bacteria also contributes to the phosphorus cycle returning phosphorus needed by animals to the soil and water, that plants absorb.

Detailed explanation-3: -Plants take up inorganic phosphate from the soil. The plants may then be consumed by animals. Once in the plant or animal, the phosphate is incorporated into organic molecules such as DNA. When the plant or animal dies, it decays, and the organic phosphate is returned to the soil.

Detailed explanation-4: -Much of the phosphorus on Earth is tied up in rock and sedimentary deposits, from which it is released by weathering, leaching, and mining. Some of it passes through freshwater and terrestrial ecosystems via plants, grazers, predators, and parasites, to be returned to those ecosystems by death and decay.

Detailed explanation-5: -Weathering, Precipitation, and Dissolution Minerals break down over time (a process referred to as weathering) and release phosphorus in the soil solution for plant uptake.