The Four Sphere

 Geographers break down the Earth’s systems into four spheres that make up the world’s air (atmosphere), water (hydrosphere), land (geosphere), and living organisms (biosphere).

Three of these spheres are abiotic and one sphere is biotic. Abiotic describes substances that are made from non-living materials. Biotic relates to living things like bacteria, birds, mammals, insects, and plants.



In this breakdown, all of the Earth’s water is included in the hydrosphere. This includes surface water (such as rivers, lakes, and oceans), water in the ground, ice and snow, and water in the atmosphere in the form of water vapor.


Atmosphere

The Earth’s atmosphere is the gaseous layer that envelopes the world. The commons term for the atmosphere is “air”.

The Earth’s atmosphere is held around the planet by the force of gravity.

A view of the atmosphere from Chain of Craters Road in Hawaii Volcanoes National Park in Hawaii. Photo: USGS, public domain.

The Earth’s atmosphere has five main layers and a sixth layer, the ionosphere, that overlaps the mesosphere, thermosphere, and exosphere.

The bottom layer, which is the layer closest to the Earth, is the most dense of the five layers. This layer is known as the troposphere. This is the layer of the Earth’s atmosphere that humans live and breathe in.

The troposphere starts at ground level and extends to 10 kilometers in altitude.

The troposphere is also the layer where almost all clouds form because 99% of the water in the Earth’s atmosphere is found in this layer.

Hydrosphere

All of the water on Earth is known collectively as the Earth’s hydrosphere. This is water found in the air, the soil, in glaciers, the oceans, rivers, lakes, and streams of the world.

Water is found in all three states on Earth which are gas, liquid, and solid. As gas, water is found as water vapor in the atmosphere.

In liquid form water is found in streams, rivers, lakes, ponds, and oceans along with mist in the air and as dew on the surface of the ground.

Water is found in solid form as ice and snow.

An ocean cave on the coast of Capri Island, Italy. Photo: John J. Mosesso, USGS. Public domain.

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