Geology Reference
In-Depth Information
The Second Journey
In this journey, the events leading from 'oxygen in the air' to 'fire' to 'vegetation'
to 'phosphorous weathering' are the same as those you have just experienced on
the first journey. Taste the oxygen in your in-breath as we begin at 'phosphorus
weathering'.
('Phosphorus weathering' to 'phosphorus to ocean'): You are an ion of phosphate
weathered out of the rocks by the nutrient-hungry land plants. The great fires on
land triggered by abundant oxygen have killed off much of the rock-weathering
vegetation. As a result, very few phosphate ion brothers share your journey into
the tumbling river that washes you down over boulders and cataracts to the sea.
(To 'photosynthesis by oceanic algae'): You are now a single-celled diatom gently
floating on the surface of the sunlit ocean off the coast of Africa. Your whole being
trembles with an insatiable hunger for phosphorus that the sea cannot fulfil. Now
you become all the tiny drifting light-gatherers in the world's oceans—each one a
single photosynthesising cell. You feel the collective hunger of the entire ocean's
free-swimming photosynthesisers for the phosphorus denied them by the massive
