The Geosphere

Since 'geo' means 'ground,' the geosphere describes all of the rocks, minerals and ground that are
found on and in Earth. This includes all of the mountains on the surface, as well as all of the
liquid rock in the mantle below us and the minerals and metals of the outer and inner cores. The
continents, the ocean floor, all of the rocks on the surface, and all of the sand in the deserts are
all considered part of the geosphere. Basically, if it looks like solid ground, it's part of the
'ground' sphere.

The Hydrosphere
Knowing that 'hydro' means 'water,' you may have guessed that the hydrosphere is made up of
all the water on Earth. This includes all of the rivers, lakes, streams, oceans, groundwater, polar
ice caps, glaciers and moisture in the air (like rain and snow). The hydrosphere is found on the
surface of Earth, but also extends down several miles below, as well as several miles up into the
atmosphere.

Most of Earth's water is salty and in the oceans - about 97%. Two-thirds of the remaining 3% is
frozen in glaciers and polar ice caps. Only 1% of the hydrosphere is liquid freshwater, and even
most of this exists as groundwater down

Fresh water 2% saline water 97%

Fresh water

Other 0.9ground water 30% icecap and glacier 68.7,surface water0.37

Surface water river 2% swamps11%lakes87%

The Biosphere
With the prefix 'life,' this means that Earth's biosphere is composed of all of the living
organisms on the planet. This includes all of the plants, animals, bacteria, fungi and single-celled
organisms found on Earth. Most of this life exists no deeper than about 10 feet into the ground or
about 600 feet above it.

Because each individual is so small in relation to the overall planet, organisms are often grouped
into biomes, which are regional communities characterized by vegetation and climate.

Lithosphere
A lithosphear for "rocky", and [sphaira] for "sphere") is the rigid outermost shell of a terrestrial-type
planet or natural satellite that is defined by its rigid mechanical properties. On Earth, it is composed
of the crust and the portion of the upper mantle that behaves elastically on time scales of thousands
of years or greater. The outermost shell of a rocky planet, the crust, is defined on the basis of its
chemistry and mineralogy.
The study of past and current formations of landscapes is called geomorphology.

Earth's lithosphere
Earth's lithosphere includes the crust and the uppermost mantle, which constitute the hard and rigid
outer layer of the Earth. The lithosphere is subdivided into tectonic plates. The uppermost part of the
lithosphere that chemically reacts to the atmosphere, hydrosphere and biosphere through the soil
forming process is called the pedosphere. The lithosphere is underlain by the asthenosphere which
is the weaker, hotter, and deeper part of the upper mantle. The Lithosphere-Asthenosphere
boundary is defined by a difference in response to stress: the lithosphere remains rigid for very long
periods of geologic time in which it deforms elastically and through brittle failure, while the
asthenosphere deforms viscously and accommodates strain through plastic deformation.
Types
 [Different types of lithosphere
There are two types of lithosphere:

 Oceanic lithosphere, which is associated with oceanic crust and exists in the ocean
basins (mean density of about 2.9 grams per cubic centimeter)
 Continental lithosphere, which is associated with continental crust (mean density of about 2.7
grams per cubic centimeter)
The thickness of the lithosphere is considered to be the depth to the isotherm associated with the
transition between brittle and viscous behavior.[7] The temperature at which olivine begins to deform
viscously (~1000 °C) is often used to set this isotherm because olivine is generally the weakest
mineral in the upper mantle. Oceanic lithosphere is typically about 50–140 km thick [8](but beneath
the mid-ocean ridges is no thicker than the crust), while continental lithosphere has a range in
thickness from about 40 km to perhaps 280 km;[8] the upper ~30 to ~50 km of typical continental
lithosphere is crust. The mantle part of the lithosphere consists largely of peridotite. The crust is
distinguished from the upper mantle by the change in chemical composition that takes place at
the Moho discontinuity.
Oceanic lithosphere
Oceanic lithosphere consists mainly of mafic crust and ultramafic mantle (peridotite) and is denser
than continental lithosphere, for which the mantle is associated with crust made of felsic rocks.
Oceanic lithosphere thickens as it ages and moves away from the mid-ocean ridge. This thickening
occurs by conductive cooling, which converts hot asthenosphere into lithospheric mantle and causes
the oceanic lithosphere to become increasingly thick and dense with age. In fact, oceanic lithosphere
is a thermal boundary layer for the convection in the mantle. The thickness of the mantle part of the
oceanic lithosphere can be approximated as a thermal boundary layer that thickens as the square
root of time.

Oceanic lithosphere is less dense than asthenosphere for a few tens of millions of years but after
this becomes increasingly denser than asthenosphere. This is because the chemically differentiated
oceanic crust is lighter than asthenosphere, but thermal contraction of the mantle lithosphere makes
it more dense than the asthenosphere. The gravitational instability of mature oceanic lithosphere has
the effect that at subduction zones, oceanic lithosphere invariably sinks underneath the overriding
lithosphere, which can be oceanic or continental. New oceanic lithosphere is constantly being
produced at mid-ocean ridges and is recycled back to the mantle at subduction zones. As a result,
oceanic lithosphere is much younger than continental lithosphere: the oldest oceanic lithosphere is
about 170 million years old, while parts of the continental lithosphere are billions of years old. The
oldest parts of continental lithosphere underlie cratons, and the mantle lithosphere there is thicker
and less dense than typical; the relatively low density of such mantle "roots of cratons" helps to
stabilize these regions