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APES Earth systems

AP Environmental Science

Atmosphere, water, soil, carbon. The systems APES treats as one planet, not eight topics.

  1. 01

    The limb of Earth: a thin glowing film.
    Atmosphere

    Atmosphere as a thin film

    Weather lives in a thin film. The rest of the stack is overhead, not climate.

    KS3GCSENGSS MS

  2. 02

    Earth’s energy budget as a measured diagram.
    Atmosphere

    Earth’s energy budget

    The ground, not the air, takes the Sun’s punch first.

    KS3GCSENGSS MS

  3. 03

    Water leaving a surface as vapour and returning as rain.
    Water & Carbon

    Water cycle stores and flows

    A blackout after a blizzard is weather. The reason there is snow to melt into the reservoir is a closed budget of stores and transfers.

    KS3GCSENGSS MS

  4. 04

    A soil pit with readable horizons.
    Soils & Rocks

    Soil profile

    O A E B C R — a stack, not dirt. Compare brown earth, mollisol, oxisol.

    GCSEA-levelNGSS MS

  5. 05

    A living carbon store.
    Water & Carbon

    Carbon cycle

    Fast stores and slow stores. The fossil-fuel tap is a human transfer from slow to fast.

    GCSEA-levelNGSS MS

  6. 06

    A savanna: climate as a plant formation.
    Atmosphere

    Climate types

    Köppen is a map of plants pretending to be a map of weather. The tiles are biomes with a temperature–rain story.

    KS3GCSENGSS MS