In this video, we're going to begin our lesson on biogeochemical cycles. And so the term biogeochemical has the root bio, which means life, and the root geo, which means Earth. And so considering that, biogeochemical cycles refer to the cycling of chemicals between the Earth and life. Or in other words, biogeochemical cycles refer to processes that recycle chemical nutrients and elements between biotic and abiotic parts of an ecosystem. Now it turns out that there are several different types of biogeochemical cycles, but moving forward in our course, we're going to talk about the water cycle, the carbon cycle, the nitrogen cycle, and the phosphorus cycle in their own separate videos.
Now all of these cycles are going to consist of biological processes of life and geological processes of the Earth that actually move chemical nutrients and elements between different reservoirs, which is really just a term that refers to storage spaces for these chemical nutrients and elements. And so if we take a look at our image down below, notice that each of these four circles that we can see throughout this image represents different types of reservoirs or storage spaces for these chemical elements and nutrients. And all of these pink arrows that you can see throughout the image represent either biological and or geological processes that allow for these chemical nutrients and elements to move from reservoir to reservoir. And so moving forward in our course, we're going to see very specific examples of reservoirs and biological and geological processes that connect them. But for now, this here concludes our introduction to biogeochemical cycles, and I'll see you all in our next video.