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| title | chunk | source | category | tags | date_saved | instance |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Biomass (ecology) | 3/3 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biomass_(ecology) | reference | science, encyclopedia | 2026-05-05T07:17:15.767962+00:00 | kb-cron |
Animals represent less than 0.5% of the total biomass on Earth, with about 2 billion tonnes C in total. Most animal biomass is found in the oceans, where arthropods, such as copepods, account for about 1 billion tonnes C and fish for another 0.7 billion tonnes C. Roughly half of the biomass of fish in the world are mesopelagic, such as lanternfish, spending most of the day in the deep, dark waters. Marine mammals such as whales and dolphins account for about 0.006 billion tonnes C. Land animals account for about 500 million tonnes C, or about 20% of the biomass of animals on Earth. Terrestrial arthropods account for about 150 million tonnes C, most of which is found in the topsoil. Land mammals account for about 180 million tonnes C, most of which are humans (about 80 million tonnes C) and domesticated mammals (about 90 million tonnes C). Wild terrestrial mammals account for only about 3 million tonnes C, less than 2% of the total mammalian biomass on land. Most of the global biomass is found on land, with only 5 to 10 billion tonnes C found in the oceans. On land, there is about 1,000 times more plant biomass (phytomass) than animal biomass (zoomass). About 18% of this plant biomass is eaten by the land animals. However, marine animals eat most of the marine autotrophs, and the biomass of marine animals is greater than that of marine autotrophs. According to a 2020 study published in Nature, human-made materials, or technomass, outweigh all living biomass on earth, with plastic alone exceeding the mass of all land and marine animals combined.
== Global rate of production ==
Net primary production is the rate at which new biomass is generated, mainly due to photosynthesis. Global primary production can be estimated from satellite observations. Satellites scan the normalised difference vegetation index (NDVI) over terrestrial habitats and scan sea-surface chlorophyll levels over oceans. This results in 56.4 billion tonnes C/yr (53.8%) for terrestrial primary production and 48.5 billion tonnes C/yr for oceanic primary production. Thus, the total photoautotrophic primary production for the Earth is about 104.9 billion tonnes C/yr. This translates to about 426 gC/m2/yr for land production (excluding areas with permanent ice cover) and 140 gC/m2/yr for the oceans. However, there is a much more significant difference in standing stocks—while accounting for almost half of the total annual production, oceanic autotrophs account for only about 0.2% of the total biomass. Terrestrial freshwater ecosystems generate about 1.5% of the global net primary production. Some global producers of biomass, in order of productivity rates, are
== See also ==
== References ==
== Further reading ==
== External links ==
Biocubes: a visualization of biomass and technomass The mass of all life on Earth is staggering — until you consider how much we've lost Counting bacteria Archived 12 December 2013 at the Wayback Machine Trophic levels Biomass distributions for high trophic-level fishes in the North Atlantic, 1900–2000