What Is the Importance of Photosynthesis in Nature?

The natural world is constantly under the influence of processes that sustain plant, animal and human activity. Although these processes are vital to the Earth's structure as we know it, many of them are invisible to the naked eye. For example, photosynthesis provides many benefits to the natural world but is not apparent to the general population.

What is Photosynthesis?

• Clermont College's Biology department explains that photosynthesis is the process by which some plants and algae transform light energy into carbon energy, storing it as glucose that provides nutrition to the plant. The actual process occurs in the chloroplasts that give some plants their green pigment.

Sustains Life

• Plants and algae that rely on photosynthesis to create and store energy become food for many other organisms, transferring that energy to organisms at all levels of the food chain. When herbivores eat plants, they absorb the energy stored by plants through photosynthesis. When carnivores consume herbivores, they also consume the stored energy originally captured by plants and later by the herbivores. Decomposers feed off of tissue from dead carnivores, also absorbing the energy that passed through the food chain from the plants, herbivores and carnivores.

Improves Air Quality

• The Arizona State University Center for Bioenergy and Photosynthesis indicates that human reliance on fossil fuels has resulted in an increase of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, causing many environmental problems. Photosynthesis helps remove carbon emissions by consuming them and releasing oxygen into the atmosphere, counteracting the effects of carbon emissions and cleaning the air for humans, plants and animals to breathe.