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Gaia, the largest entity in the nested system of life on Earth, is surely not an organism, but it nevertheless shows a kind of physiology with fascinating internal dynamics. This statement implies physiologic functions, chemical cycles, even feedback loops that have some role in long-term stability. What are these functions, how do we know they exist, and how do we learn about them?
This is the subject that Tyler Volk tackles brilliantly in Gaia's Body. A seamless, engagingly readable introduction to the budding new field of Earth physiology, Gaia's Body blends real science with evocative imagery in describing the system of life, soil, ocean, and air we have termed the biosphere.
Volk shows how every important chemical in the atmosphere is regulated by living processes; why strange, spaghetti-like bacteria off the coast of Chile have an intimate connection with the plants in your backyard; why "biochemical guilds" may be Earth's most important unit of life; and even how scientists have detected the "breathing" of the biosphere. He examines long-term trends in Earth's evolution (is Gaia growing colder? more complex?) and examines humanity's role in Gaia's past and future.
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Subjects
Gaia hypothesis, Earth sciencesShowing 6 featured editions. View all 6 editions?
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Gaia's Body: Toward a Physiology of Earth
Jul 01, 2012, Copernicus
paperback
1461221919 9781461221913
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Gaia's body: toward a physiology of earth
2003, MIT Press
in English
- 1st MIT Press paperback ed.
0262720426 9780262720427
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5
Gaia's body: toward a physiology of earth
1998, Copernicus
Hardcover
in English
0387982701 9780387982700
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6
Gaia's Body: Toward a Physiology of Earth (Copernicus)
October 23, 1997, Springer
in English
0387982701 9780387982700
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Book Details
Edition Notes
Includes bibliographical references (p. [253]-261) and index.
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