Comment: 13:12 - 13:48 (00:36)
Source: Annenberg/CPB Resources - Earth Revealed - 15. Weathering and Soils
Keywords: "James Sadd", weathering, "chemical weathering", soil, life, humans, habitat, plant, water, "trace element", bacteria, nutrient, "terrestrial food chain"
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Our transcription: Although weathering is fundamentally a process of destruction, it has the beneficial effect of breaking rocks down into soil, which is essential to all land-based life.
Humans could probably live without oil or coal or wood to burn, but we wouldn't survive without soil.
Soil, has many functions.
It's the habitat for land plants, it harbors bacteria which produce nutrients essential to these plants, and it's a storehouse for water and for trace elements, which by the way are also produced by chemical weathering.
In fact, soil is the foundation upon which the entire terrestrial food chain depends.
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Geology School Keywords
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