A natural phenomenon in this atlas is a process rather than a place or a species: something that happens in the living or physical world on a repeating or characteristic basis, from a single organism's own behavior to a planet scale chemical cycle. Seven bands group the atlas's phenomenon entities by what kind of process is at work: Biogeochemical Cycles, Animal Behavior and Adaptation, Evolutionary Processes, Ecological Processes, Climate and Weather Patterns, Ocean and Marine Phenomena, and Geological and Atmospheric Phenomena. This band excludes the species or ecosystem a phenomenon plays out within, each its own entity linked back by relationship, and it excludes a single weather or geological event tied to one place and date, which belongs to the atlas that records dated events rather than to this recurring process band.