The Earth's Biosphere: Evolution, Dynamics, and Change

I'm reading this as a textbook for a course in my Master's program but it would be an interesting read anyways. It's very "meaty" with detailed descriptions of Earth's processes and human impacts on them. Highly recommend!

Book should be read by every human on the planet. The biosphere is a living organism which we are harming to our own demise.

I'll be glad to change (and likely upgrade this review). Problem is, the print (font, size & amount of ink) - I can't read it !Only book ever from Amazon that I could not read the print. Admittedly, I'm older and my "corrected" eyesight is not that good,but this is the first book in which I've been totally SOL. Plus, I'd buy the kindle edition (I bought the paperback), but not at itsridiculously steep price. I called Amazon but they could not help out. Why is the Kindle edition so much money ?

Few more complete and accessible syntheses of recent research in climate, evolution, and environmental studies exist. If your last bio class was high school, reading Smil can catch you up.

This rather slim book (271 pages of text) is a comprehensive overview of the Earth's Biosphere, a detailed accounting of our planet from the atmosphere to the oceans and the earth's crust, everything that in any way affects life on Earth, from the smallest viral particles to sperm whales, from tiny spores to giant sequoias.It begins with the history of our understanding of the biosphere and goes on to talk about the basic building blocks of living organisms and how the elements that compose them are continually recycling. It tells us about their diversity, their resilience to change, how energy is stored and transferred, the importance of water, and the inter-dependance of all living things. And finally it tells us about the dynamics of change, how the earth's biosphere is transformed by human action.The author has done an excellent job of summarizing the latest knowledge and research from a wide variety of scientific fields and the text is liberally interspersed with many diagrams, illustrations and graphs. I would say a basic interest in science is a pre-requisite to understanding most of the information, the scope of this project spans many different fields from basic physics, chemistry and geology to genetics and microbiology. Sadly, this will mean that many readers will be lost during some of the text, which is unfortunate because the topic is so important to the very survival of our species that this should be essential reading for every human being.

This is a very readable book about the history and nature of the Earth's biosphere, and ideas about its future.Smil begins with some fascinating material on the the nature and origin of early life on Earth. That includes a discussion of stromatolites (early life), and some interesting comments about guesses of the odds of life appearing in a stellar system in the Galaxy. While estimates that hold the chances to be small are taken seriously, Fred Hoyle's argument that the chance is outrageously small is shown to be silly.The author then describes the nature and diversity of life in general, and its resiliance to a variety of natural catastrophes, including bolide impacts and supernovae.Smil tells us about how the biosphere is energized, by solar radiation and the Earth's internal heat. And we then see the flows of water and materials, including carbon, nitrogen, sulfur, and other mineral cycles. The next two chapters deal with the extent of the biosphere and the biosphere's mass and productivity. There are organisms that range up to 50 km above the surface of our planet, or to the bottom of the oceans, nearly 11 km down. To tens of meters below the land surface. And at temperatures ranging from 110 degrees Celsius to minus 50. pH ranges can be from 1 to 11. Meanwhile, the biomass may be anywhere from 2200 to 4000 Gigatons of Carbon.There is a chapter on the dynamics and organization of the biosphere, including the quarter-power scaling of animal and plant metabolism "that applies across an entire range of body sizes and metabolic pathways."After that, Smil discusses the transformation of the biosphere due to human actions, such as the release of sulfur, nitrogen, and carbon into the atmosphere. The book concludes with some ideas about the future of the biosphere. He speculates that the Earth's population will stabilize at well below 10 billion people and that there needs to be a transition "from fossil fuels to solar radiation as the dominant source of human energy needs." Meanwhile, there are problems to face: we humans are awfully prone to violence, there may be a new ice age, we could be hit by a big bolide, and so forth. Still, the author is mentions that the biosphere might prove surprisingly resiliant to what is being done to it at present.There are a few useful appendices, covering milestones in the evolution of the Earth and its biosphere, sizes and masses of organisms, chemical reactions in the carbon, nitrogen, and sulfur cycles, and ocean and land estimates of the biosphere's phytomass, heterotrophic biomass, and net primary productivity, There's also a list of useful websites.I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in the topic.