Which process adds oxygen to the atmosphere

October 29, thanh. What process adds oxygen to ocean water? Answers The oxygen can enter the water through diffusion or photosynthesis. In the process of diffusion oxygen slowly diffuse across the water's surface from the air.

In the process of photosynthesis, oxygen is a produced as a waste product from aquatic plants. Answer Option D - Photosynthesis Explanation. Yet no one has come up with a rock-solid test to determine the precise oxygen content of the atmosphere at any given time from the geologic record. But one thing is clear—the origins of oxygen in Earth's atmosphere derive from one thing: life. David Biello is a contributing editor at Scientific American. Follow David Biello on Twitter. Already a subscriber?

Sign in. Thanks for reading Scientific American. Create your free account or Sign in to continue. See Subscription Options. Go Paperless with Digital. Get smart. The chemical process of photosynthesis involves combining carbon dioxide, water and sunlight to create glucose that plants use for fuel.

Another product of photosynthesis is oxygen, which plants expel just as humans and other animals breathe out carbon dioxide. When plants are undergoing photosynthesis, usually during the day, they are taking up carbon dioxide and releasing oxygen into the air.

That oxygen then becomes available for other organisms to use. The expulsion of oxygen by plants through photosynthesis is the reason that there is such a large amount of oxygen in Earth's atmosphere. When plans are using the process of respiration, they are producing carbon dioxide instead of oxygen. Autotrophs that use photosynthesis include plants, some protists such as algae and cyanobacteria.

The majority of seaweeds are actually protists, although seagrass is an example of a true aquatic plant. It is estimated that 50 to 80 percent of oxygen produced on Earth comes from the ocean as a result of photosynthesis.

The majority of photosynthetic organisms in the ocean are not true plants but either algae or photosynthetic bacteria. Algae can be multicellular, such as giant kelp, or unicellular, such as diatoms. Cyanobacteria are photosynthetic bacteria, also known as blue-green algae, that make up a large percentage of marine phytoplankton.

The biomass of ocean plants and plantlike organisms is 0. The fact that these marine photosynthetic organisms produce the majority of Earth's oxygen means that marine plants are times more productive than land plants, with respect to their mass. This makes sense in terms of photosynthetically active biomass - a single-celled alga will have much more biomass dedicated to photosynthesis than a giant sequoia, with inactive heartwood and other non-photosynthetic plant parts.