Cycles of Life: Civilization and the Biosphere (Scientific American Library)

Seen through a different sort of lens, life might look like a swirl of elements, cycling through the biosphere--the realm that encompasses those regions of the earth's soil, water, and atmosphere that can support living organisms. Carbon, nitrogen, and sulfur come to rest for a time in an organism, only to be expelled as byproducts of its metabolism or, after it dies, its decomposition. <p>These elements are continually cycling between inorganic compounds and living matter in "inconspicuous but unceasing" processes that have the power to sustain life and effect enormous planetary change. The processes are also vulnerable to the interference of man.</p> <p>In Cycles of Life, Vaclav Smil explores the crucial insight that, through their participation in these biogeochemical cycles, living organisms act as a tremendously important agent of change in their environment. He shows, for example, how the composition of the atmosphere has been affected by microscopic organisms of the ocean; climate by the Earth's vegetation; soil chemistry by microbes teeming on and beneath the planet's surface.</p> <p>Smil argues that several of today's principal environmental concerns--such as possible global warming, acid rain, photochemical smog, and the degradation of ecosystems--are tied to human interference in the biospheric cycles of carbon, nitrogen, and sulfur. Human society has always interfered in this cycling of elements, but industrialization and development worldwide have intensified the disruption, as burning fossil fuels spew carbon, nitrogen, and sulfur oxides into the air and crop fertilizers overload waters and ecosystems with nitrogen. From the broader perspective offered by this book's examination of biogeochemical cycles, Smil is able to explore the links among environment, energy, food, population, economy, and society that will determine how these interferences shape the planet's future.</p> <p>Based on the latest scientific research, Smil's Cycles of Life is an authoritative, engaging introduction to the workings of the biosphere, one that emphatically calls for thoughtful environmental management, yet remains sensible in its recommendations for preventing further environmental damage.</p> <p> Future human activity will inevitably disrupt further the flow of the biogeochemical cycles of carbon, nitrogen, and sulfur. By helping us understand how those cycles work and how we interfere with their flows and stores, Smil is arming us to meet one of modern society's great challenges--to prosper on this planet while still protecting it.</p>