gaia hypothesis

Gaia Hypothesis

In subject area: Earth and Planetary Sciences

The Gaia Hypothesis suggests that Earth and its biological systems function as a single entity with self-regulatory feedback loops to maintain conditions favorable for life.

AI generated definition based on: Encyclopedia of Ecology , 2008

Chapters and Articles

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P.J. Boston , in Encyclopedia of Ecology , 2008

Introduction

The Gaia hypothesis , named after the ancient Greek goddess of Earth, posits that Earth and its biological systems behave as a huge single entity. This entity has closely controlled self-regulatory negative feedback loops that keep the conditions on the planet within boundaries that are favorable to life. Introduced in the early 1970s, the idea was conceived by chemist and inventor James E. Lovelock and biologist Lynn Margulis. This new way of looking at global ecology and evolution differs from the classical picture of ecology as a biological response to a menu of physical conditions. The idea of co-evolution of biology and the physical environment where each influences the other was suggested as early as the mid-1700s, but never as strongly as Gaia, which claims the power of biology to control the nonliving environment. More recently, the terms Gaian science or Gaian theory have become more common than the original Gaia hypothesis because of modifications in response to criticisms and expansion of our scientific understanding.

GAIA HYPOTHESIS

T. Lenton , in Encyclopedia of Atmospheric Sciences , 2003

The Gaia hypothesis postulates that the Earth's surface is maintained in a habitable state by self-regulating feedback mechanisms involving organisms tightly coupled to their environment. The concept is based on several observations:

The atmosphere is in an extreme state of thermodynamic disequilibrium owing to the activities of life, yet aspects of its composition are remarkably stable.

Present conditions at the surface of the Earth are close to optimal for the dominant organisms.

Life has persisted for over 3.8 billion years despite increasing solar luminosity and variable exchange of matter with the inner Earth.

The Earth system has repeatedly recovered from massive perturbations.

The Daisyworld model demonstrated that planetary self-regulation can occur without teleology, in a manner consistent with natural selection. Since the origin of life, organisms have had a profound effect on the Earth's atmospheric composition and the climate. The ‘faint young Sun’ was initially counteracted by a carbon dioxide and methane ‘greenhouse’ atmosphere. The biological amplification of silicate rock weathering has progressively reduced the carbon dioxide content of the atmosphere and acted as a long-term climate stabilizer. Atmospheric oxygen rose in a stepwise fashion to ∼21% of the atmosphere, about which it has been tightly regulated for the past 350   million years. Feedbacks involving terrestrial and marine biota also affect the climate over shorter time scales. The predominance of positive feedback in the recent glacial–interglacial cycles suggests that the Earth system is nearing a transition to an alternative state. Eventually, self-regulation will collapse and the Earth will be sterilized, but this is unlikely to occur for at least another 0.5–1.2 billion years.

Mycorrhizal Fungi☆

L.M. Egerton-Warburton , ... S.L. Finkelman , in Reference Module in Earth Systems and Environmental Sciences , 2013

Lovelock's Gaia hypothesis conceptualized biodiversity and mutualism in their most advanced and elegant integration. In mycorrhizae, diversity and mutualistic functioning unite successive systems into networks and complex systems. In order to show that complexity has increased overall, it is sufficient to show, that – all other things being equal – connections have increased in at least one dimension. What is lacking is the ability to make predictions about how complexity in mycorrhizal communities will change their function as the systems and/or their environment is altered by human impacts and global change. Combining metagenomics, transcriptomics, molecular, metabolic, and biochemical data with nonlinear mathematical models might provide the foundations and rules for understanding mycorrhizal complexity. The limitations and utility of any data, however, remain in developing data-mining and complexity-modeling tools and techniques to utilize effectively the information from a local and global perspective, because data are gathered on scales from molecules to genomes, organelles, cells, tissues, and organs. Bioinformatics is the acquisition of knowledge by means of computational tools for the organization, management, and mining of genetic biological data. These analytical tools are being increasingly applied to the oceans of data collected by metagenomics studies. A more appropriate term for mycorrhizal systems may be ‘ecoinformatics’ or the accumulation of ecologically based data sets appropriate to mycorrhizae in situ , followed by data integration. In doing so, it will then be appropriate to say that diversity and mutualism provide ecosystem function and what that functioning may be.

The physical and chemical bases of energy

David E. Reichle , in The Global Carbon Cycle and Climate Change , 2020

2.4 Gaia hypothesis

The Gaia Hypothesis proposed by James Lovelock (1972) suggests that living organisms on the planet interact with their surrounding inorganic environment to form a synergetic and self-regulating system that created, and now maintains, the climate and biochemical conditions that make life on Earth possible. Gaia bases this postulate on the fact that the biosphere, and the evolution or organisms, affects the stability of global temperature, salinity of seawater, and other environmental variables. For instance, even though the luminosity of the sun, the Earth's heat source, has increased about 30% since life began almost four billion years ago, the living system has reacted as a whole to maintain temperatures at a level suitable for life. Cloud formation over the open ocean is almost entirely a function of oceanic algae that emit sulfur molecules as waste metabolites which become condensation nuclei for rain. Clouds, in turn, help regulate surface temperatures.

Lovelock compared the atmospheres of Mars and Earth, and noted that the Earth's high levels of oxygen and nitrogen were abnormal and thermodynamically in disequilibrium. The 21% oxygen content of the atmosphere is an obvious consequence of living organisms, and the levels of other gases, NH 3 and CH 4 , are higher than would be expected for an oxygen-rich atmosphere. Biological activity also explains why the atmosphere is not mainly CO 2 and why the oceans are not more saline. Gaia postulates that conditions on Earth are so unusual that they could only result from the activity of the biosphere ( Lovelock and Margulis, 1974 ).

David E. Reichle , in The Global Carbon Cycle and Climate Change (Second Edition) , 2023

The Gaia Hypothesis proposed by James Lovelock (1972) suggests that living organisms on the planet interact with their surrounding inorganic environment to form a synergetic and self-regulating system that created, and now maintains, the climate and biochemical conditions that make life on Earth possible. Gaia bases this postulate on the fact that the biosphere, and the evolution of organisms, affect the stability of global temperature, the salinity of seawater, and other environmental variables. For instance, even though the luminosity of the sun, the Earth's heat source, has increased about 30% since life began almost four billion years ago, the living system has reacted as a whole to maintain temperatures at a level suitable for life. Cloud formation over the open ocean is almost entirely a function of oceanic algae that emit sulfur molecules as waste metabolites, which become condensation nuclei for rain. Clouds, in turn, help regulate surface temperatures.

Lovelock compared the atmospheres of Mars and Earth and noted that the Earth's high levels of oxygen (21% atmospheric composition) and nitrogen (78%) were abnormal and thermodynamically in disequilibrium. The 21% oxygen content of the atmosphere is an obvious consequence of living organisms, and the levels of other gases, NH 3 and CH 4 , are higher than would be expected for an oxygen-rich atmosphere. The biological activity also explains why the atmosphere is not mainly CO 2 and why the oceans are not more saline. Gaia postulates that conditions on Earth are so unusual that they could only result from the activity of the biosphere.

Consider what might be learned from the history of Earth's sister planet Venus. Today Venus has a surface temperature of 840°F (450°C) and an atmosphere dominated by carbon dioxide, with a density 90 times that of Earth's. However, for much of its history, Venus likely had an Earth-like climate, with oceans, rain, perhaps snow, maybe even continents and plate tectonics, and even more speculatively perhaps even life on its surface. Then, less than a billion years ago, Venus' climate dramatically changed due to a runaway greenhouse effect. It can be speculated that an intensive period of volcanism pumped enough carbon dioxide into the atmosphere to cause this great climate change event that evaporated the oceans, caused the end of the water cycle, and significantly raised temperatures, and ended any possibilities of life.

Scientists have discovered the world's oldest forest in an abandoned quarry near Cairo, New York. The 385-million-year-old rocks contain the fossilized woody roots of dozens of ancient trees ( Stein et al., 2019 ). These trees mark an important stage in the Earth's history. When trees evolved roots, they began to take the CO 2 sequestered from the atmosphere and store it away – radically shifting the climate and contributing to the atmosphere that we have today.

The CLAW hypothesis illustrates the principle of the Gaia Hypothesis. The Phanerozoic Eon, the current geologic eon in the geologic time scale, covers 541 million years to the present, during which abundant animal and plant life has existed. During this period, the greenhouse gas CO 2 in the global carbon cycle has played a critical role in the maintenance of the Earth's temperature within the limits of habitability. The CLAW hypothesis ( Charlson et al., 1987 ), derived from the author's initials and inspired by the Gaia hypothesis, proposes that a feedback loop operates between ocean ecosystems and the Earth's climate ( Fig. 2.1 ). This hypothesis posits an example of planetary-scale homeostasis where phytoplankton, which produces dimethyl sulfide are responsive to variations in climate forcing, and that these responses lead to a negative feedback loop that acts to stabilize the temperature of the Earth's atmosphere.

Figure 2.1 . An example of how the biosphere can affect the Earth's climate. Phytoplankton produces more dimethyl sulfide resulting in negative feedback in the global carbon cycle (see Chapter 10.5 ) and exerts a homeostatic effect on the global climate by reducing sunlight Source: Charlston et al., 1987).

This negative feedback loop begins with an increase in the available energy from the sun causing an increase in the growth rates of phytoplankton due to elevated temperature and/or enhanced photosynthesis resulting from increased irradiance. Certain phytoplankton, such as coccolithophorids, synthesize dimethylsulfoniopropionate (DMSP), and their enhanced growth increases its production, leading to an increase in the concentration of its breakdown product, dimethyl sulfide (DMS), first in seawater and then in the atmosphere. DMS is oxidized in the atmosphere to form sulfur dioxide, and this leads to the production of sulfate aerosols. These aerosols act as cloud condensation nuclei and increase the number of cloud droplets, which in turn elevate the liquid water content of clouds and cloud area. This results in an increase in cloud albedo, leading to the greater reflection of incident sunlight and a decrease in the forcing that initiated this chain of events.

Future Climate

Martin Rice , Ann Henderson-Sellers , in The Future of the World's Climate (Second Edition) , 2012

18.1.2 The Gaia Hypothesis

The Gaia hypothesis (Lovelock, 1972; Lovelock and Margulis, 1973) postulates: “the climate and chemical composition of the Earth’s surface environment is, and has been, regulated in a state tolerable for the biota” (Lovelock, 1989, p. 215). The Gaia hypothesis ( Figure 18.1 ) – named after the Greek goddess of Earth by the author William Golding (Lovelock, 2009) – was criticized for not fully factoring in evolution by natural selection and, in particular, competition between organisms (e.g., Dawkins, 1982). In response, Lovelock contended that, “In no way is this [Gaia] theory a contradiction of Darwin’s great vision. It is an extension to it to include the largest living organism in the Solar System, the Earth itself” (Lovelock, 1986, p. 25). The Daisyworld model ( Figure 18.2 ) (Lovelock, 1983; Watson and Lovelock, 1983) was developed to illustrate how Gaia may work (Kump and Lovelock, 1995). It also provides an initial ‘mathematical framework’ for understanding self-regulation (Lenton, 1998).

FIGURE 18.2 . Daisyworld and Woollyworld are both extremely simplified depictions of planetary systems: the former due to Lovelock (1979) and the latter described in outline by Schellnhuber (1999). On Daisyworld there are only two life forms: white and black daisies. (a) Fraction of planet Daisyworld covered by different daisies as solar luminosity increases over time; (b) how the global mean planetary temperature on Daisyworld is ‘controlled’ by the daisies; (c) schematic of some of the inhabitants of Woollyworld: populated by sheep that graze, reflect solar radiation, and emit the greenhouse gas methane (CH 4 ).

Daisyworld is an imaginary planet, similar in many respects to Earth, on which grow only daisies. The daisies have an abundance of nutrients and water. Their ability to spread across the planetary surface depends only on temperature, and the relationship is parabolic, with minimum, optimum, and maximum temperatures for growth. The climate system is correspondingly simple. There are no clouds, and no greenhouse gases [GHGs]. The planetary energy balance is a function only of solar insolation, albedo and surface temperature, and planetary albedo depends on the areal coverage of the soil (which is grey) by black and white daisies. (Kump and Lovelock, 1995, p. 539) (Reprinted from Kump and Lovelock, 1995; with permission from Elsevier.)

The Gaia hypothesis has evolved over time, generating further research to test its robustness and advance the notion of a holistic ES. For example, “When introduced, this [Gaia] hypothesis was contrary to conventional wisdom that life adapted to planetary conditions as it and they evolved in their separate ways. We now know that the hypothesis as originally stated was wrong because it is not life alone but the whole ES that does the regulating” (Lovelock, 2009, p. 166). In a paper presented at the United Nations University in Tokyo on 25 September 1992, Lovelock explained that, although contentious, the Gaia hypothesis has generated many experiments (Lovelock, 1993). This section describes how – through these experiments – researchers have attempted to elucidate how the ES works by using climate as an illustrative example of how processes and feedbacks can operate homeostasis. Indicative of this thinking is the investigation of the role of algae in the ocean and its control of Earth’s climate through the dimethyl sulfide (DMS) process.

18.1.2.1 Dimethyl Sulfide (DMS) and Climate Regulation

DMS, central to numerous atmospheric processes, plays an important role in climate regulation (Kump and Lovelock, 1995; Ayers and Gillett, 2000). How an understanding of DMS was attained illustrates the evolution of integrated ESs thinking. For instance, Ayers and Gillett (2000) explain that, despite the effort of a small group of researchers (e.g., Junge and Manson, 1961; Fletcher, 1962), initial sulfur studies were limited. This was particularly because the source of aerosol sulfur in regions far removed from volcanoes or anthropogenic emissions of sulfur dioxide had yet to be determined, making it problematical to balance global sulfur budgets. The solution came “with the suggestion by Lovelock et al. (1972) that DMS was the ‘missing’ biogenic source of sulfur needed to balance the global atmospheric sulfur budget” (Ayers and Gillett, 2000, p. 276).

Recognition of the importance of DMS, combined with earlier cloud microphysical studies (e.g., Twomey, 1977; Twomey et al., 1984) that made the connection between droplet numbers and cloud radiative transfer properties (Ayers and Gillett, 2000), led to the CLAW 1 hypothesis (Charlson et al., 1987). This hypothesis postulates, “biological regulation of the climate is possible through the effects of temperature and sunlight on phytoplankton population and dimethyl sulfide production” (Charlson et al., 1987, p. 665). In other words, DMS emissions from the oceans are influenced by climate and climate (through the impact of cloud albedo on the radiation budget) is affected by Cloud Condensation Nuclei (CCN) emanating from DMS emissions, “making climate and DMS emissions interdependent and closing a feedback loop” (Ayers and Gillett, 2000, p. 276).

Looking at the elucidation of DMS as part of the whole planet’s chemistry and its importance to climate regulation, it seems that the systems approach advocated by Lovelock and others was an important framework. For example, Lenton (1998) argues that the Gaia hypothesis was used to make predictions, such as “marine organisms would make volatile compounds that can transfer essential elements from the ocean to the land. The discovery that dimethyl sulfide and methyl iodide are the major atmospheric carriers of the sulfur and iodine cycles, respectively, support this suggestion.” (Lenton, 1998, p. 440). Another early example of ES framing using climate as an illustrator is seen in research on vegetation and climate interactions.

18.1.2.2 Vegetation and Climate Interactions

When large changes were recognized as occurring in tropical rainforests (e.g., Salati and Vose, 1984), tests were conducted to try to determine their climatic impact (e.g., Henderson-Sellers and Gornitz, 1984). Fundamental aspects of this research included the use of stable water isotopes to track hydrological changes (e.g., Salati et al., 1979; McGuffie and Henderson-Sellers, 2004) and model simulations of tropical deforestation that helped elucidate the importance of an accurate representation of vegetation in global climate modelling (e.g., Dickinson and Henderson-Sellers, 1988; Henderson-Sellers et al., 2008).

Tropical deforestation simulations indicated a “sensitivity of the local climate to the removal of tropical forest…. Moreover, the scale of moisture convergence changes, and possibly also cloud and convection changes, is such that there is a possibility that nonlocal climatic impacts may also occur” (Zhang et al., 1996, p. 1516). Further studies (e.g., Zhang et al., 2001) found that tropical deforestation can impact large-scale atmospheric circulation. This supported previous Global Climate Model (GCM) studies (e.g., Sud et al., 1988) and suggested that land-use change (e.g., tropical deforestation) may affect projections of future climate (cf. Pitman and de Noblet-Ducoudré, 2012, this volume). However, research in Amazonia had yet to be studied in an interdisciplinary manner (Dickinson, 1987), a central tenet of an ESs approach.

Although it was not clear how deforestation might threaten interdependent (homeostatic) systems because “our scientific framework is yet inadequate to make such judgments” (Dickinson, 1987, p. 1), and well before detailed disciplinary research of the 1990s–2000s, research scientists joined an international conference on ‘Climatic, Biotic, and Human Interactions in the Humid Tropics with Emphasis on the Vegetation and Climatic Interactions in Amazonia’ in Brazil in 1985. This meeting brought together some of the world’s top scientists to examine critical processes linking climate and vegetation in the tropics. The humid tropics were chosen as the focus because they were deemed of fundamental importance to the global climate. The urgent need to carefully analyse land-use change and climate in the humid tropics was combined with a desire to communicate research findings clearly ( Figure 18.3 ).

FIGURE 18.3 . Forest moisture recycling increases precipitation in the Amazon, that is, why removing trees reduces rainfall. A Cathy Wilcox cartoon (first published on 4 March 2005 on the front page of The Sydney Morning Herald , Australia) illustrating a geophysiological discovery made by tracking and modelling stable water isotopes.

Tropical forests are vulnerable to anthropogenic climate change through disturbances in precipitation and temperature (e.g., Lewis et al., 2011) and the compounding effects of tropical deforestation and greenhouse warming on climate have been investigated for some time (e.g., Zhang et al., 2001; Fearnside, 2011). There are many synergies operating among local people’s survival, climate, vegetation, and land-use change in the humid tropics. For example, as Fearnside (2011) notes, “Because half of the dry weight of the trees in a tropical forest is carbon, either deforestation or forest die-off releases this carbon in the form of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) and methane (CH 4 ), whether the trees are burned or simply left to rot” (Fearnside, 2011, p. 1283).

Gradually, as tropical forests became a key part of climate change research and policy debate, simulations became more like ‘Gaian-type experiments’ in which researchers attempted to describe how the ES works by using disturbances to the tropical forests’ climate as an exemplar (e.g., Henderson-Sellers et al., 1988). An integrated systems approach (big picture perspective) evolved through the lens of ESS. This understanding prompted the concept of teleconnections and tipping points resulting from tropical deforestation in Amazonia, Africa, and South East Asia, as discussed by Lenton (2012, this volume). Nobre (2011, personal communication) made the following comments:

Prompted by a need to create a scientific framework to better understand these complex processes, the workshop on Vegetation and Climatic Interactions in Amazonia in 1985 helped advance an integrated Earth systems approach. The Conference recommendations evolved into central Large-Scale Biosphere Atmosphere Experiment in Amazonia (LBA) themes of understanding the Amazon as a regional entity of the Earth system and of studying how climate and land cover changes can alter its physical, chemical and biological functioning. C. Nobre, personal communication, 2011

Lovelock’s Gaia hypothesis advanced understanding that a planet with abundant life will have an atmosphere with ‘thermodynamic disequilibrium’ and that “Earth is habitable because of complex linkages and feedbacks between the atmosphere, oceans, land, and biosphere”, which helped shape ESS (Lawton, 2001, p. 1965). The remainder of this section focuses on the genesis and evolution of ESS.

EARTH SYSTEM SCIENCE

R.C. Selley , in Encyclopedia of Geology , 2005

Earth System Science and the ‘Gaia’ Hypothesis

Since the 1970s James Lovelock developed the Gaia hypothesis , named after the ancient Greek goddess of the Earth ( See GAIA ). As originally conceived the ‘Gaia’ concept envisages the Earth as a super-organism that operates to regulate its own environment, principally temperature, to keep it habitable for the biosphere. Lovelock has never argued that the biosphere consciously anticipates environmental change, but only that it automatically responds to it. Nonetheless some sections of the public have construed it that way, and in the popular mind Gaia gained a quasi-mystical connotation, enhanced by its name. The great value of the Gaia hypothesis is that it presents the interdependence of the constituents of the geosphere in a media-friendly way. Earth system science also involves a holistic approach to the geosphere, but without the ‘ghost in the machine’. Nonetheless Amazon, the internet book shop, still classifies books on Earth system science under ‘Religion and Spirituality > New Age > Earth-Based Religions > Gaia’.

Self-Organization

D.G. Green , ... T.G. Leishman , in Encyclopedia of Ecology (Second Edition) , 2008

Self-Organization in the Biosphere

Arguably the most ambitious ecological theory based on self-organization is the Gaia hypothesis , which postulates that the biosphere itself evolves to a homeostatic state. Lovelock suggested the Daisyworld model as an illustration of how this process might occur. On the hypothetical Daisyworld, black and white daisies compete for space. Although both kinds of daisies grow best at the same temperature, black daisies absorb more heat than white daisies. When the Sun shines more brightly, heating the planet, white daisies spread, and the planet cools again. When the Sun dims, the black daisies spread, warming the planet. In this way, competitive interactions between daisies provide a homeostatic mechanism for the planet as a whole.

The idea behind Gaia is that ecosystems will survive and spread more effectively if they promote the abiotic conditions required for their own persistence. If so, ecosystems might gradually evolve to be increasingly robust, and if this happened on a global scale, then the biosphere itself might behave as a self-regulating system. However, evidence for Gaian processes in real ecosystems remains tenuous and their theoretical plausibility is disputed.

Biogeochemical Cycling

Raina M. Maier , in Environmental Microbiology (Second Edition) , 2009

14.1.2 Gaia Hypothesis

In the early 1970s, James Lovelock theorized that Earth behaves like a superorganism, and this concept developed into what is now known as the Gaia hypothesis . To quote Lovelock (1995) : “Living organisms and their material environment are tightly coupled. The coupled system is a superorganism, and as it evolves there emerges a new property, the ability to self-regulate climate and chemistry.” The basic tenet of this hypothesis is that Earth's physicochemical properties are self-regulated so that they are maintained in a favorable range for life. As evidence for this, consider that the sun has heated up by 30% during the past 4–5 billion years. Given Earth's original carbon dioxide–rich atmosphere, the average surface temperature of a lifeless Earth today would be approximately 290°C ( Table 14.2 ). In fact, when one compares Earth's present-day atmosphere with the atmospheres found on our nearest neighbors Venus and Mars, one can see that something has drastically affected the development of Earth's atmosphere. According to the Gaia hypothesis, this is the development and continued presence of life. Microbial activity, and later the appearance of plants, have changed the original heat-trapping carbon dioxide–rich atmosphere to the present oxidizing, carbon dioxide–poor atmosphere. This has allowed Earth to maintain an average surface temperature of 13°C, which is favorable to the life that exists on Earth.

TABLE 14.2 . Atmosphere and Temperatures Found on Venus, Mars, and Earth Plane

A dapted from Lovelock, 1995 .

Copyright © 1995

How do biogeochemical activities relate to the Gaia hypothesis? These biological activities have driven the response to the slow warming of the sun, resulting in the major atmospheric changes that have occurred over the last 4–5 billion years. When Earth was formed 4–5 billion years ago, a reducing (anaerobic) atmosphere existed. The initial reactions that mediated the formation of organic carbon were abiotic, driven by large influxes of ultraviolet (UV) light. The resulting reservoir of organic matter was utilized by early anaerobic heterotrophic organisms. This was followed by the development of the ability of microbes to fix carbon dioxide photosynthetically. Evidence from stromatolite fossils suggests that the ability to photosynthesize was developed at least 3.5 billion years ago. Stromatolites are fossilized laminated structures that have been found in Africa and Australia ( Fig. 14.1 ). Although the topic is hotly debated, there is evidence that these structures were formed by photosynthetic microorganisms (first anaerobic, then cyanobacterial) that grew in mats and entrapped or precipitated inorganic material as they grew ( Bosak et al. , 2007) .

FIGURE 14.1 . An example of a living stromatolite (left) and a stromatolite fossil (right).

The evolution of photosynthetic organisms tapped into an unlimited source of energy, the sun, and provided a mechanism for carbon recycling, that is, the first carbon cycle ( Fig. 14.2 ). This first carbon cycle was maintained for approximately 1.5 billion years. Geologic evidence then suggests that approximately 2 billion years ago, photosynthetic microorganisms developed the ability to produce oxygen. This allowed oxygen to accumulate in the atmosphere, resulting, in time, in a change from reducing to oxidizing conditions. Further, oxygen accumulation in the atmosphere created an ozone layer, which reduced the influx of harmful UV radiation, allowing the development of higher forms of life to begin.

FIGURE 14.2 . The carbon cycle is dependent on autotrophic organisms that fix carbon dioxide into organic carbon and heterotrophic organisms that respire organic carbon to carbon dioxide.

At the same time that the carbon cycle evolved, the nitrogen cycle emerged because nitrogen was a limiting element for microbial growth. Although molecular nitrogen was abundant in the atmosphere, microbial cells could not directly utilize nitrogen as N 2 gas. Cells require organic nitrogen compounds or reduced inorganic forms of nitrogen for growth. Therefore, under the reducing conditions found on early Earth, some organisms developed a mechanism for fixing nitrogen using the enzyme nitrogenase. Nitrogen fixation remains an important microbiological process, and to this day, the majority of nitrogenase enzymes are totally inhibited in the presence of oxygen.

When considered over this geologic time scale of several billion years, it is apparent that biogeochemical activities have been unidirectional. This means that the predominant microbial activities on earth have evolved over this long period of time to produce changes and to respond to changes that have occurred in the atmosphere, namely, the appearance of oxygen and the decrease in carbon dioxide content. Presumably these changes will continue to occur, but they occur so slowly that we do not have the capacity to observe them.

One can also consider biogeochemical activities on a more contemporary time scale, that of tens to hundreds of years. On this much shorter time scale, biogeochemical activities are regular and cyclic in nature, and it is these activities that are addressed in this chapter. On the one hand, the presumption that Earth is a superorganism and can respond to drastic environmental changes is heartening when one considers that human activity is effecting unexpected changes in the atmosphere, such as ozone depletion and buildup of carbon dioxide. However, it is important to point out that the response of a superorganism is necessarily slow (thousands to millions of years), and as residents of Earth we must be sure not to overtax Earth's ability to respond to change by artificially changing the environment in a much shorter time frame.

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The Gaia hypothesis

The evolution of life and the atmosphere.

• The biosphere and Earth’s energy budget
• The cycling of biogenic atmospheric gases
• Biosphere controls on the structure of the atmosphere
• Biosphere controls on the planetary boundary layer
• Biosphere controls on maximum temperatures by evaporation and transpiration
• Biosphere controls on minimum temperatures
• Climate and changes in the albedo of the surface
• The effect of vegetation patchiness on mesoscale climates
• Biosphere controls on surface friction and localized winds
• Cloud condensation nuclei
• Biogenic ice nuclei
• Recycled rainfall
• Climate, humans, and human affairs

• What is a climate classification?
• Are there different kinds of climate classifications?
• Who was Wladimir Köppen?
• What are Köppen’s five main climate types?

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The notion that the biosphere exerts important controls on the atmosphere and other parts of the Earth system has increasingly gained acceptance among earth and ecosystem scientists. While this concept has its origins in the work of American oceanographer Alfred C. Redfield in the mid-1950s, it was English scientist and inventor James Lovelock that gave it its modern currency in the late 1970s. Lovelock initially proposed that the biospheric transformations of the atmosphere support the biosphere in an adaptive way through a sort of “genetic group selection .” This idea generated extensive criticism and spawned a steady stream of new research that has enriched the debate and advanced both ecology and environmental science . Lovelock called his idea the “ Gaia Hypothesis ” and defined Gaia as

a complex entity involving Earth’s biosphere, atmosphere, oceans, and soil ; the totality constituting a feedback of cybernetic systems which seeks an optimal physical and chemical environment for life on this planet .

The Greek word Gaia, or Gaea, meaning “Mother Earth,” is Lovelock’s name for Earth, which is envisioned as a “superorganism” engaged in planetary biogeophysiology. The goal of this superorganism is to produce a homeostatic , or balanced, Earth system. The scientific process of research and debate will eventually resolve the issue of the reality of the “Gaian homeostatic superorganism,” and Lovelock has since revised his hypothesis to exclude goal-driven genetic group selection . Nevertheless, it is now an operative norm in contemporary science that the biosphere and the atmosphere interact in such a way that an understanding of one requires an understanding of the other. Furthermore, the reality of two-way interactions between climate and life is well recognized.

Life on Earth began at least as early as 3.5 billion years ago during the middle of the Archean Eon (about 4 billion to 2.5 billion years ago). It was during this interval that life first began to exercise certain controls on the atmosphere. The atmosphere’s prebiological state is often characterized as being rich in water vapour and carbon dioxide. Though some nitrogen was also present, little if any oxygen was available. Chemical reactions with hydrogen sulfide , hydrogen , and reduced compounds of nitrogen and sulfur precluded any but the shortest lifetime for free oxygen in the atmosphere. As a result, life evolved in an atmosphere that was reducing (high hydrogen content) rather than oxidizing (high oxygen content). In addition to their chemically reducing character, the predominant gases of this prebiotic atmosphere, with the exception of nitrogen, were largely transparent to incoming sunlight but opaque to outgoing terrestrial infrared radiation . As a result, these gases are called, perhaps improperly, greenhouse gases ( see greenhouse effect ) because they are able to slow the release of outgoing radiation back into space .

In the Archean Eon, the Sun produced as much as 25 percent less light than it does today; however, Earth’s temperature was much like that of today. This is possible because the greenhouse gas -rich Archean atmosphere was effective in retarding the loss of terrestrial radiation to space. The resulting long residence time of energy within the Earth-atmosphere system resulted in a warmer atmosphere than would have been possible otherwise. The average temperature of Earth’s surface in the early Archean Eon was warmer than the modern global average. It was, according to some sources, probably similar to temperatures found in today’s tropics. Depending on the amount of nitrogen present during the Archean Eon, it has been suggested that the atmosphere may have held more than 1,000 times as much carbon dioxide than it does today.

Archean organisms included photosynthetic and chemosynthetic bacteria , methane -producing bacteria, and a more primitive group of organisms now called the “ Archaea ” (a group of prokaryotes more related to eukaryotes than to bacteria and found in extreme environments). Through their metabolic processes, organisms of the Archean Eon slowly changed the atmosphere. Hydrogen rose from trace amounts to about 1 part per million (ppm) of dry air . Methane concentrations increased from near zero to about 100 ppm. Oxygen increased from near zero to 1 ppm, whereas nitrogen concentrations rose to encompass 99 percent of all atmospheric molecules excluding water vapour. Carbon dioxide concentrations decreased to only 0.3 percent of the total; however, this was nearly 10 times the current concentration. The composition of the atmosphere, its radiation budget, its thermodynamics , and its fluid dynamics were transformed by life from the Archean Eon.

American geochemist Robert Garrels calculated that, in the absence of life and given the burial rate of carbon in rocks , oxygen would be unavailable to form water, and free hydrogen would be lost to space. Without the presence of life and compounded by this loss of hydrogen, there would be no oceans , and Earth would have become merely a dusty planet by the middle of the Archean Eon. By the end of the Archean Eon 2.5 billion years ago, both the pigment chlorophyll and photosynthetic organisms had evolved such that the production of oxygen increased rapidly. The atmosphere became transformed from a reducing atmosphere with carbon dioxide, limited oxygen, and anaerobic organisms (that is, life-forms that do not require oxygen for respiration) in control to one with an oxidizing atmosphere that was rich in oxygen , poor in carbon dioxide, and dominated by aerobic organisms (that is, life-forms requiring oxygen for respiration).

With the decline in carbon dioxide and a rise in oxygen, the greenhouse warming capacity of Earth’s atmosphere was sharply reduced; however, this happened over a period of time when the energy produced by the Sun increased systematically. These compensating changes resulted in a relatively constant planetary temperature over much of Earth’s history .

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• Published: 18 December 2003

Gaia: The living Earth

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Imagine a science-based civilization far distant in the Galaxy that had built an interferometer of such resolving power that it could analyse the chemical composition of our atmosphere. Simply from this analysis, they could confidently conclude that Earth, alone among the planets of the Solar System, had a carbon-based life and an industrial civilization. They would have seen methane and oxygen coexisting in the upper atmosphere, and their chemists would have known that these gases are continually consumed and replaced. The odds of this happening by chance inorganic chemistry are very long indeed. Such persistent deep atmospheric disequilibrium reveals the low entropy characteristic of life. They would conclude that ours was a live planet — and the presence of CFCs in the atmosphere would suggest an industry unwise enough to have allowed their escape.

As part of NASA's planetary exploration team in 1965, thoughts such as these led me to propose atmospheric analysis for detecting life on Mars. I also wondered what could be keeping Earth's chemically unstable atmosphere constant and so appropriate for life, and what kept the climate tolerable despite a 30% increase in solar luminosity since the Earth formed. Together, these thoughts led me to the hypothesis that living organisms regulate the atmosphere in their own interest, and the novelist William Golding suggested Gaia as its name. Although the concept of a live Earth is ancient, Newton was the first scientist to compare the Earth to an animal or a vegetable. Hutton, Huxley and Vernadsky expressed similar views but, lacking quantitative evidence, these earlier ideas remained anecdotal. In 1925 Alfred Lotka conjectured that it would be easier to model the evolution of organisms and their material environment coupled as a single entity than either of them separately. Gaia had its origins in these earlier thoughts, from the evidence gathered by the biogeochemists Alfred Redfield and Evelyn Hutchinson and from the mind-wrenching top-down view provided by NASA.

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Scientists finally have an explanation for the ‘Gaia puzzle’

Associate Professor of Sustainability Science, University of Southampton

Director, Global Systems Institute, University of Exeter

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We will likely never know how life on Earth started. Perhaps in a shallow sunlit pool. Or in the crushing ocean depths miles beneath the surface near fissures in the Earth’s crust that spewed out hot mineral-rich soup. While there is good evidence for life at least 3.7 billion years ago , we don’t know precisely when it started.

But these passing aeons have produced something perhaps even more remarkable: life has persisted. Despite massive asteroid impacts, cataclysmic volcano activity and extreme climate change, life has managed to not just cling on to our rocky world but to thrive.

How did this happen? Research we recently published with colleagues in Trends in Ecology and Evolution offers an important part of the answer, providing a new explanation for the Gaia hypothesis.

Developed by scientist and inventor James Lovelock , and microbiologist Lynn Margulis , the Gaia hypothesis originally proposed that life, through its interactions with the Earth’s crust, oceans, and atmosphere, produced a stabilising effect on conditions on the surface of the planet – in particular the composition of the atmosphere and the climate. With such a self-regulating process in place, life has been able to survive under conditions which would have wiped it out on non-regulating planets.

Lovelock formulated the Gaia hypothesis while working for NASA in the 1960s. He recognised that life has not been a passive passenger on Earth. Rather it has profoundly remodelled the planet, creating new rocks such as limestone, affecting the atmosphere by producing oxygen, and driving the cycles of elements such as nitrogen, phosphorus and carbon. Human-produced climate change, which is largely a consequence of us burning fossil fuels and so releasing carbon dioxide, is just the latest way life affects the Earth system.

While it is now accepted that life is a powerful force on the planet, the Gaia hypothesis remains controversial. Despite evidence that surface temperatures have, bar a few notable exceptions, remained within the range required for widespread liquid water, many scientists attribute this simply to good luck. If the Earth had descended completely into an ice house or hot house (think Mars or Venus) then life would have become extinct and we would not be here to wonder about how it had persisted for so long. This is a form of anthropic selection argument that says there is nothing to explain.

Clearly, life on Earth has been lucky. In the first instance, the Earth is within the habitable zone – it orbits the sun at a distance that produces surface temperatures required for liquid water. There are alternative and perhaps more exotic forms of life in the universe, but life as we know it requires water. Life has also been lucky to avoid very large asteroid impacts. A lump of rock significantly larger than the one that lead to the demise of the dinosaurs some 66m years ago could have completely sterilised the Earth.

But what if life had been able to push down on one side of the scales of fortune? What if life in some sense made its own luck by reducing the impacts of planetary-scale disturbances? This leads to the central outstanding issue in the Gaia hypothesis: how is planetary self-regulation meant to work?

While natural selection is a powerful explanatory mechanism that can account for much of the change we observe in species over time, we have been lacking a theory that could explain how the living and non-living elements of a planet produce self-regulation. Consequently the Gaia hypothesis has typically been considered as interesting but speculative – and not grounded in any testable theory .

Selecting for stability

We think there is finally an explanation for the Gaia hypothesis. The mechanism is based on “ sequential selection ”, a concept first suggested by climate scientist Richard Betts in the early 2000s. In principle it’s very simple. As life emerges on a planet it begins to affect environmental conditions, and this can organise into stabilising states which act like a thermostat and tend to persist, or destabilising runaway states such as the snowball Earth events that nearly extinguished the beginnings of complex life more than 600m years ago.

If it stabilises then the scene is set for further biological evolution that will in time reconfigure the set of interactions between life and planet. A famous example is the origin of oxygen-producing photosynthesis around 3 billion years ago, in a world previously devoid of oxygen. If these newer interactions are stabilising, then the planetary-system continues to self-regulate. But new interactions can also produce disruptions and runaway feedbacks. In the case of photosynthesis it led to an abrupt rise in atmospheric oxygen levels in the “ Great Oxidation Event ” around 2.3 billion years ago. This was one of the rare periods in Earth’s history where the change was so pronounced it probably wiped out much of the incumbent biosphere, effectively rebooting the system.

The chances of life and environment spontaneously organising into self-regulating states may be much higher than you would expect. If fact, given sufficient biodiversity, it may be extremely likely . But there is a limit to this stability. Push the system too far and it may go beyond a tipping point and rapidly collapse to a new and potentially very different state.

This isn’t a purely theoretical exercise, as we think we may able to test the theory in a number of different ways. At the smallest scale that would involve experiments with diverse bacterial colonies. On a much larger scale it would involve searching for other biospheres around other stars which we could use to estimate the total number of biospheres in the universe – and so not only how likely it is for life to emerge, but also to persist.

The relevance of our findings to current concerns over climate change has not escaped us. Whatever humans do life will carry on in one way or another. But if we continue to emit greenhouse gasses and so change the atmosphere, then we risk producing dangerous and potentially runaway climate change. This could eventually stop human civilisation affecting the atmosphere, if only because there will not be any human civilisation left.

Gaian self-regulation may be very effective. But there is no evidence that it prefers one form of life over another. Countless species have emerged and then disappeared from the Earth over the past 3.7 billion years. We have no reason to think that Homo sapiens are any different in that respect.

This article was updated on July 10 to add the reference to Richard Betts.

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Gaia Hypothesis: Could Earth Really be a Single Organism?

Can a planet like Earth be considered a single living organism? After all, the human body is composed of hundreds of billions of bacteria, and yet we consider the human body to be a single organism. The Gaia Hypothesis (or popularly known as “Gaia Theory”) goes beyond the individual organisms living on Earth, it encompasses all the living and non-living components of Earth’s biosphere and proposes that the complex interacting systems regulate the environment to a very high degree (here’s a biosphere definition). So much so, that the planet may be viewed as a single organism in its own right. What’s more this hypothesis was developed by a NASA scientist who was looking for life on Mars… When you stop to think about it, our planet does act like a huge organism. If you look at the interrelationship between plants and atmospherics, animals and humans, rocks and water, a complex pattern of symbiotic processes seem to complement each other perfectly. Should one system be pushed out of balance by some external force (such as a massive injection of atmospheric carbon dioxide after a volcanic event), other processes are stimulated to counteract the instability (more phytoplankton appear in the oceans to absorb the carbon dioxide in the water). Many of these processes could be interpreted as a “global immune system”.

The hypothesis that our planet could be a huge organism was the brain child of British scientist Dr James Lovelock. In the 1960’s when Lovelock was working with NASA on methods to detect life on the surface of Mars, his hypothesis came about when trying to explain why Earth has such high levels of carbon dioxide and nitrogen. Lovelock recently defined Gaia as:

“ …organisms and their material environment evolve as a single coupled system, from which emerges the sustained self-regulation of climate and chemistry at a habitable state for whatever is the current biota .” – Lovelock J. (2003) The living Earth. Nature 426, 769-770.

So, Lovelock’s work points to interwoven ecological systems that promote the development of life currently living on Earth. Naturally, the statement that Earth itself is actually one living organism encompassing the small-scale mechanisms we experience within our biosphere is a highly controversial one, but there are some experiments and tests that have been carried out to support his theory. Probably the most famous model of the Gaia hypothesis is the development of the “Daisyworld” simulation. Daisyworld is an imaginary planet whose surface is either covered in white daisies, black daisies or nothing at all. This imaginary world orbits a sun, providing the only source of energy for the daisies to grow. Black daisies have a very low albedo (i.e. they do not reflect the sun’s light), thereby getting hot and heating up the atmosphere surrounding them. White daisies have a high albedo, reflecting all the light back out of the atmosphere. The White daisies stay cool and do not contribute to atmospheric warming. Java applet of the Daisyworld simulation »

When this basic computer simulation runs, a rather complex picture emerges. In the aim of optimizing the growth of daisies on Daisyworld, the populations of white and black daisies fluctuate, regulating the atmospheric temperatures. When the simulation starts, there are huge changes in population and temperature, but the system quickly stabilizes. Should the solar irradiance suddenly change, the white:black daisy ratio compensates to stabilize atmospheric temperatures once more. The simulated Daisyworld plants are self-regulating atmospheric temperature, optimizing their growth.

This is an oversimplified view of might be happening on Earth, but it demonstrates the principal argument that Gaia is a collection of self-regulating systems. Gaia helps to explain why atmospheric gas quantities have remained fairly constant since life formed on Earth. Before life appeared on our planet 2.5 billion years ago, the atmosphere was dominated by carbon dioxide. Life quickly adapted to absorb this atmospheric gas, generating nitrogen (from bacteria) and oxygen (from photosynthesis). Since then, the atmospheric components have been tightly regulated to optimize conditions for the biomass. Could it also explain why the oceans aren’t too salty? Possibly.

This self-regulatory system is not a conscious process; it is simply a collection of feedback loops , all working to optimize life on Earth. The hypothesis also does not interfere with the evolution of species or does it point to a “creator”. In its moderate form, Gaia is a way of looking on the dynamic processes on our planet, providing an insight to how the seemingly disparate physical and biological processes are actually interlinked. As to whether Gaia exists as an organism in it’s own right, it depends on your definition of “organism” (the fact that Gaia cannot reproduce itself is a major drawback for viewing Earth as an organism), but it certainly makes you think…

Original source: Guardian

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62 Replies to “Gaia Hypothesis: Could Earth Really be a Single Organism?”

I believe life is anything that gives off takes in or simply is made up of energy. From our brain waves to a rocks magnetic pull on a compass is all some form of life. I’m open to critics so come on hit me with it….

Hmmmmmm…. I’m very intrigued by John Mendenhall’s comment… If we terreform another planet, has Gaia reproduced? Wow, now there’s a thought! I’m gonna have to see if anyone has checked this possibility out!

PS. Oh, and Hamy, I can presume, speculate and comment on any story I write. Us contributers are allowed to put forward our views too – this is the strength of the Universe Today.

Ian/John, Great points. Yes, I think that is actually one of the most intriguing ideas of our time. That humanity is the reproductive cells of Gaia and that it is the knowledge we gain of this planet and its incredible ecosystems and the seeds of life itself that we are charged with taking into the universe and making new Earths. I have heard Peter Diamandis discuss this idea before and I am thrilled to see more minds coming to this idea on their own.

Does this theory even attempt to define exactly what “life” is? It’s hard to claim something is living without defining what that means. If you define it as depicted in the article, that means the earth, and millions of other non-living things are living. If you use commonly accepted requirements such as “must produce offspring”, “must adapt to it’s environment”, etc, then it’s a stretch to claim the earth can perform those actions.

I never really thought of the earth and its organisms inthe same way that our body is made up of living cells…I guess this is putting the term “mother nature” to the test…

Quote: “…the fact that Gaia cannot reproduce itself is a major drawback for viewing Earth as an organism…” How do you know that? Of the 4.3 billion years of planet Earth, we have only experience of a sentient two or three millennia. We had no concept of sulphur based organisms and would have thought the possibility preposterous until they were discovered… to have had to accept that they could breed would have taxed the credulity a few decades ago. In the expectation of eternity, perhaps Earth hasn’t got around to planning a family yet. Presume what you wish, but keep it to yourself please.

The Earth a single living organism? I’ve heard this one before… Perhaps, I suppose.. Depending on the definition. But then why not let us go further and say that the whole known Universe is, or part of, a single living organism? All of the building blocks are there (here).

Hamy, are you familiar with the term “burden of proof”? You have the burdon of proof and you are making the presumption in this case.

You could say the earth already has made offspring, the moon. It came from the mating of the earth and an asteroid. You could also say two cars having a car wreck and a bumper flying off is reproduction, therefore the cars are alive.

Here is an old website for those who are interested/bored… It also has a page on the Gaian Hypotheses.

http://library.thinkquest.org/C003763/index.php?page=origin06

If we terraform a few planets to suit ourselves, has Gaia reproduced?

“(the fact that Gaia cannot reproduce itself is a major drawback for viewing Earth as an organism), ”

Actually, think panspermia. Meteor strikes may have caused mass extinction on earth while spreading microbes to other planets.

Then again, consider expansion of humankind into space… “manspermia”? Maybe when we (humanity) are able to settle other planets, our planet will have reached puberty.

Though the planet itself is not reproduced, the shell of life that encompasses the earth can reproduce.

library.thinkquest.org/C003763/index.php?page=origin06

I think this is dangerous thinking. If the Earth is one organism, then what if to keep the Earth healthy, it is determined that the “bacterial” entity, human, must be vacinated against? Are we ready for that?

With all of the technology that we are creating we are losing our connection to the universe. Our heart beats are connected to it, our bodies are made of the same materials, we are all one. Nothing on this level of reality is independent of anything else. Everything is one. Check out theories of the holographic universe (robert talton), string theory, documentary called “what the bleep do we know”, or search google or youtube for the esoteric agenda.

Does that make google the brain (nucleus) of the Earth?

hell yeah! reminds of south park lice capades ! great ep … :S

Isn’t the Earth more like an orange covered with fungus floating in free space?

Hmmm.. I like it, but would have to disagree. I think because of plate tectonics it would be more like a rotten mango covered with fungus floating in free space… It’s more squishy… That’s a technical term… 🙂

Ian — I would differ with you as to the assumption that Gaia can’t reproduce. No less a scientist than biologist Lynn Margulis has pointed out that our efforts to establish ourselves offworld are precisely that: Gaia’s mode of reproduction. We provide the transport offworld, and take a good representative of Earthly life with us, out of necessity, perhaps in mobile habitats carved out of asteroids or that sort of thing. You’re thinking of “little planets” as equivalent to a planet’s babies. But sexual reproduction among multicellular organism involves transfer of genetic material to the eggs of the female, resulting in zygotes which then undero development that culminates in viable young. The female’s egg and male’s sperm look nothing like adults of that species, nor like viable offspring; egg and sperm are just individual cells — to start with. When they get together, a process begins that ends with a new organism of that species. If we carry Earthly life along with us to other worlds, whether habitats carved out of small rocky bodies or worlds of other stars, assuming our colonies make it, Earth — i.e., Gaia — has thereby reproduced, in every sense of the word. Anthropologist and essayist Loren Eiseley once said of cockleburrs adhering to his treouser legs as he walked through a field, that as far as the planets who produced those burrs are concerned, we great big humans are just the bus for the burrs, their way of getting as far away as possible from the parent plant in order to have a good chance of landing where few others of their kind might be. So Gaia can in fact reproduce — and we’re . . . well, part of Gaia’s reproductive system.

¿Puede considerarse que la Tierra es un único organismo viviente? Después de todo, el cuerpo humano está compuesto por cientos de miles de millones de bacterias, pero consideramos que el cuerpo es un único organismo. La hipótesis de Gaia (popularmente conocida como “la teoria de Gaia”) va más allá de los organismos individuales que pueblan la Tierra, […] Fuente: Ian O’Neill para Universe Today.

Everything everyone says is well worth taking in and considering except what Hammy says. He suggests that someone keep their thoughts to themselves. What a stupid egocentric idea.

I firmly believe that the total universe is one giant living thing and we simply can’t see what it is because we are puny little bits, Less than an atom is n our own world.

Some here are missing the point. The concept of Gaia Hypothesis is a philosophical concept, which is made from a different view point. It is a holistic view of the world, where the system is examined as a whole entity instead of the scientific method of reductionism – examining the component parts. The successful scientist usually is able to switch between the scientific method under reductionism and the view – as if from afar – to holism to picture where his or her scientific works are placed in the scheme of things. Here new sparks for new ideas are made – often portrayed as brilliant insights or inspirations. Where this concept by Lovelock was not necessary to be taken seriously, but was made, as the lead-in as “…work points to interwoven ecological systems that promote the development of life currently living on Earth.”

NOTE: Those interested in such matters, should really read the books by Douglas Hofstadter, which talks about the nature of creativity, thinking and consciousness . In fact his last 2007 book “I am a Strange Loop” is very prevalent to the discussion here, which is based on understanding the concept of individuality spread across multiple brains – such as ones own brain and computer enhanced/ stored intelligence – another holistic view of thought.

I’m with Ray Bingham: ” I firmly believe that the total universe is one giant living thing and we simply can’t see what it is because we are puny little bits, Less than an atom is n our own world.” … But I won’t use the word “firmly”… Just yet… 🙂

and Ian:, Please do continue to presume, comment and speculate on anything you want. All of us should do that…. Exchanging ideas and thoughts is what has (and will) keep us growing..

Loretta, That is very interesting.. So in essence, you are saying that this is a master plan?… Started billions of years ago?….

You know I have, for some time now, harbored the suspicion that a Star can be considered a Living Organism.

It obeys many of the classical definitions for life in that it has a form of Homeostasis. It demonstrates a Life Cycle. Stars have evolved as a result of changes in their environment. Stars interact with one another. They utilizes inorganic compounds altering their form to create new compounds by which to sustain their life cycles. Stars exhibit a birth, life and Death cycle. They change form and grow through the course of their Lives and most importantly, stars produce offspring.

I am at present composing a Thesis on the subject because I believe it is a valid and defensible hypothesis.

Ok…….now we enter the realm of Bizzaro World. Put down the pipe….pull your head out of the science fiction and listen my son……rocks and sand and stardust and dragons and hobbits and…well…you get the drift…ARE NOT ALIVE. Good Christ…where did some of you go to get your advanced education? I detect a weirdness to this site that was never there before. Just because your dope dreams tell you it is real does not make it so…my son.

Silver Thread, Yep.. I won’t disagree with you there… Well, except for the “inorganic compound” thing.. I would think that the compounds were once organic.. EVERYTHING is built from the same ‘stuff’… The question is ” How small do we want to look?” When does it go from inorganic to organic? When some convention tells us? Stars create everything that we are aware of – I’m not convinced that the ‘Big Bang’ exclusively created some elements – they created the building blocks of all life.. It’s just how you put the atoms together, that’s all.. Yes, it sounds like a good thesis, sounds good… Personally, I wouldn’t call stars “living things” unless we want to believe the Gaian hypotheses on a universal scale…. I would call them, …. “The makers of life”.. Atoms aren’t life, are they?.. Well… Maybe they are…. But with today’s current convention, atoms must be assembled in a certain way to create molecules, elements that can reproduce and evolve. That is life… From what ‘they’ say…. From what we know, every single thing, EVERYTHING in the universe, is made from the same thing. So yes, stars can be considered as living organisms.

Damn I wish I had a pipe.. 🙂

I’ve long believed in the concept of Gaia (one of my favorite terms, in fact) being a “living” organism…I can’t really see any other way of looking at it. As others have noted, “life” isn’t a tightly-defined concept.

Clint: “I think this is dangerous thinking. If the Earth is one organism, then what if to keep the Earth healthy, it is determined that the “bacterial” entity, human, must be vacinated against? Are we ready for that?”

May not dangerous *thinking* unless you’re simply looking at present-day conditions and trends. When humans were simple hunter-gatherers, living in caves (clearly Gaia’s “intent”, as many caves provide the most even and comfortable year-round natural temps on the planet), we may well have helped provide balance and prevented an overabundance of other life forms, both plant and animal, via harvests for our own subsistence. As such, we were, effectively, symbiotic in nature, from Gaia’s standpoint.

*However*, once we began “modernizing” (what Gaia might see as “greedy”), we began to tax certain lifeforms (whales and bison, for example), and contaminate the air with pollutants from large-scale industrialization (do I DARE suggest, even, WARMING THE PLACE? LOL). As such, we began to be perceived as *parasitic* creatures to Gaia – much like many viri or bacteria are to the human body.

One can, at least conceptually, see Global Warming, the Oil Crisis, even Nuclear Weapons, as forms of “antibodies” produced by Gaia, or, even, by ourselves (which would make us, in an evolutionary sense, a rather “stupid” virus bound for extinction). If we STOP being a parasitic species in Gaia’s eyes, we live. Otherwise, we die off.

I’ve long believed that Gaia is MUCH more powerful than we can even conceive, and WILL kill off the human race, if required, to protect itself. G/W is but one of those mechanisms. IMNHSO, viewing “Gaia” as “living” is the only rational (and, for humanity, SAFE) way to view the larger picture.

Great minds think alike. I agreed with all those we view humanity as Gaia’s “reproductive system”. We evolved to move into the cool and weird and either discover or create new biosphere. That is our mission.

Step one – learn how to sustain our species in a way compatible with our environment. We must limit our reproduction and defuse the population bomb.

Damn!! I really do wish I had a pipe!!.. Then I could stop thinking about theories, facts, science, and physics.. and start thinking about……… well… whatever the hell these people are thinking about…. 🙂

Scott Maxwell –

I am not your son – I’m likely more than old enough to be your father. I don’t own a pipe, don’t read science fiction (outside of Kurt Vonnegutt, Jr., anyway) – and Christ certainly has NOTHING to do with this discussion – FAR from it.

I got my “advanced education” at a major, respected public university (not that I waste time on sports, but their basketball team was in the final four last month). The “weirdness” you “detect” seems to be quite welcome here to just about everyone but you.

Welcome to the world of science – the same field of study that was once ridiculed for such “Bizarro” concepts as the Earth not being flat, the Earth not being the center of the universe, black holes, a “splitable” atom. I hope you can someday grow up enough that you don’t have to put down others with condescending terms like “my son” to make up for your own lack of vision and sense of creativity.

Posted this link in http://www.surfurls.com

Cool simulator, try putting insolation to 1.0 and watch how its the same as earth, where the poles are virtually desolate of life.

And of course Earth is an organism its Mother Earth! Lets try to treat her better or all those daisies will be gone 🙁

interesting theory/hypothesis. As usual, this is an issue stoking the ire of many forum users, but in essence, a very common problem in science – that of definition. (look at past postings on global warming & definitions of planet/dwarf planet).

Maybe we should all sit down, have a nice cup of coffee/tea & sleep on it til morning…

Just as the earth has a circle of life it is the same for the universe. Energy is never lost just transmitted into some other sort of force. So why would someone honestly think that the universe is’nt one, how could it be any other way. If it were’nt so the chaos theory would have obliterated everything long ago. (from what I remember the Chaos theory suggests that things in a chaotic state will only get worse until a complete state of symmetry is in effect.) please correct me if I’m wrong I cant remember.

OK, this is where comments get ridiculous.

ioresult’s statement “ I wish you’d do a little research before spewing nonsense like that ” is not only unconstructive it is very hurtful to the writer. We work very hard with Fraser to bring you up-to-the-minute news items with plenty of diverse articles from all facets of space science. To seriously believe I did not research this article is not only insulting, it is very short sighted. I might have made a mistake, yes (I’m a space physicist, not a biologist), but I will correct it if necessary, a simple error.

If you have any constructive comments or something to debate, please feel free to voice your opinion. Until you have a world-class space news blog or become a science writer, only then can you criticise our writing (even then, send the editor an email, it’s only polite).

Actually ioresult, I’m not changing the article at all. It totally depends on what you consider to be the “human body”. Doesn’t the body function with the aid of the hundreds of billions of bacteria? Without the bacteria we could not function. So aren’t bacteria a part of us? Therefore the human body is composed of bacteria. And if you look at the topic of the story, we are talking about Gaia – Gaia is composed of complex feedback systems and self-regulatory organisms. Isn’t Gaia composed of these organisms?

I’m not disputing the distinct differences between human cells and bacteria; they simply work in tandem to ensure the body functions.

Well-stated, alphonso. And good morning. 1st cup of coffee here – hope yours is good, also. 🙂

Thanks, Vanamonde, for the reference to limiting our population (with which I have to agree) – your comments led my thinking to a somewhat obvious conclusion:

The primary “antibodies” Gaia uses, “grown” by man (still making us a rather “stupid virus”), but actually “manufactured” by Gaia, are tobacco, and alcohol.

AJames got it right —

“The concept of Gaia Hypothesis is a philosophical concept … a holistic view of the world” Really nothing more than a “Systems” approach — Think Anthropic principle. And – yes – we should all go read Hofstadter – Especially: “I Am a Strange Loop”. However, the GH of the Earth as a “living organism” is a real “stretch” for the scientific mind — displaying our relative ignorance in understanding all the features of the environment.

However, the GH of the Earth as a “living organism” is a real “stretch” for the scientific mind

Hooray! As I think most would agree, in order to get out of one’s little box, a stretch is required.

Very stimulating comments… thank-you all. I am in my late 50’s, and have since a child had inklings of just such a concept; and in fact for the last few months when I take a conscious breath, I make an attempt to recognize my intimate and exquisite “oneness” with all around me. This effort seems to hold a possibility of new understanding.

And no, it’s not the pipe…. not even coffee.

Well, here is something to read from Wikipedia. A lot to think about. I like the way Kendall thinks…panspermia…manspermia…I must admitt I like SF. Great!

“In the thought of Teilhard de Chardin, the noosphere can be seen as the “sphere of human thought”. The noosphere is the third in a succession of phases of development of the Earth, after the geosphere (inanimate matter) and the biosphere (biological life). Just as the emergence of life fundamentally transformed the geosphere, the emergence of human cognition fundamentally transforms the biosphere. In contrast to the conceptions of the Gaia theorists, or the promoters of cyberspace, noosphere emerges at the point where humankind, through the mastery of nuclear processes, begins to create resources through the transmutation of elements. For Teilhard, the noosphere is best described as a sort of ‘collective consciousness’ of human-beings. It emerges from the interaction of human minds. The noosphere has grown in step with the organization of the human mass in relation to itself as it populates the earth. As mankind organizes itself in more complex social networks, the higher the noosphere will grow in awareness. This is an extension of Teilhard’s Law of Complexity/Consciousness, the law describing the nature of evolution in the universe. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, added that the noosphere is growing towards an even greater integration and unification, culminating in the Omega Point—which he saw as the goal of history.

The noosphere concept of ‘unification’ was elaborated in popular science fiction by Julian May in the Galactic Milieu Series. It is also the reason Teilhard is often called the patron saint of the Internet.

If we can call earth as a single organism , in the same manner we can go further , even our galaxy , or the constellations and may be universe is also a single organism, and perhaps there are many universes.

I don’t think it was ever the author’s intent that Earth itself be thought of as a “living” organism. It seems to me that all the Gaia Hypothesis is saying is that, once life began, it then interacted with both itself and the planet in whatever way was necessary to ensure its continuance. Note that does not necessarily mean the continuance of humans but life period.

Ian says: “the human body is composed of hundreds of billions of bacteria”. BZZT Wrong! The human body contains billions of bacteria, but they’re only inhabiting us. Bacteria are prokaryote cells. We’re formed of eukaryote cells. Way distinct. I wish you’d do a little research before spewing nonsense like that.

perhaps we, humans, are not part of that organism as such but are instead a cancer that is killing it.

To Vince: Yes, that is an intriging idea, we actually discussed this earlier in the comments… I reckon this could be a possible solution to considering the reproduction of Gaia…

To RL: Thank you so much for the kind comment. So happy you are enjoying the stories I choose! 😀

Cheers, Ian

I would agree that the concept that living things on Earth interacting with the Earths atmosphere and environment to maintain a steady state or equilibrium sounds plausible and is interesting. I think it is a bit much, though, to call the Earth itself or the stars or the Universe a living thing. Its a little too anthropomorphic for me.

(Yes! You don’t know how long I’ve been waiting to use that word in a sentence – 28 years actually…a long story).

None the less, this was a very interesting article. Thank you, Ian. I would like to compliment you, Fraser and the rest of the staff on a website that does make me think. Keep up the good work!

The article states how “the fact that Gaia cannot reproduce itself is a major drawback for viewing Earth as an organism”….just an idea but maybe by us being created on earth, by earth, we may eventually go to mars and other planets and terraform them, make them into earth like planets…thus giving earth the ability to “reproduce”. Any thoughts?

Gee, my Aunt had no children. Does that mean she wasn’t alive? Gertrude Stein too?

What??…. Okay… For people with pipes (all others, please disregard):

Hamy – April 30th, 2008 at 11:28 am

Maybe living earth is a child of other planets.

Ah, Lucy in the sky with diamonds.

If earth is a living organism do humans represent a cancer?

Semantics… the living organisms we (mostly) recognize are highly dependent on other life.

Calling the whole bundle one big super-organism doesn’t actually contribute anything useful. We already agreed that they are dependent.

Since the bio-sphere experiments were compromised we haven’t as much insight on “Gaia” isolation/reproduction.

Though it’s not a closed system, you see the same build up of dependent life on the ISS, in fact I believe they found a nasty sphere of water and bacteria behind an access panel on the Mir!

Are our satellite “baby Gaia”? Does it really matter? Our previous definition/understanding already accounted for the dependencies. So at best it is a non-contribution and at worst, distracting pseudo-science.

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“the fact that Gaia cannot reproduce itself is a major drawback for viewing Earth as an organism.”

Not true, if we eventually populate the moon or mars and make them habitable, is that not Gaia reproducing herself? Humans are the seeds to replicate Gaia throughout the universe. It may take hundreds of years, but to Gaia that could be only seem like a couple of years…

QUOTE ” “the fact that Gaia cannot reproduce itself is a major drawback for viewing Earth as an organism.”

Not true, if we eventually populate the moon or mars and make them habitable, is that not Gaia reproducing herself? Humans are the seeds to replicate Gaia throughout the universe. It may take hundreds of years, but to Gaia that could be only seem like a couple of years…” ”

Very true, very true, I must say that I have thought of this idea before I heard of this “Gaia” idea.

This idea sits very logically in my idea of the place we exist.

Comments are closed.

"The Gaia hypothesis says that the temperature, oxidation state, acidity, and certain aspects of the rocks and waters are kept constant, and that this homeostasis is maintained by active feedback processes operated automatically and unconsciously by the biota." - James Lovelock, The Ages of Gaia Suggested Readings: Margulis, L and J. Lovelock. 1976. Is Mars a Spaceship, Too? Natural History , June/July pp. 86-90 In this lesson, we learn: What are the weaknesses of the hypothesis? What are its strengths? What are some examples of Gaia-like feedbacks? Jump to: [ Introduction ] [ Origin of the Hypothesis ] [ Examples of Regulation ] [ Alternatives to Gaia ] [ Many Gain Hypotheses ] [ Summary ] 1. introduction - gaia and global change, 2. the hypothesis and its originators. 3. Examples of Regulation of the Environment, According to Gaia Perhaps life regulates the physical and chemical environment of the planet so as to maintain suitable planetary conditions for the good of life itself. If so, then the planet can be thought of as a single, integrated, living entity with self-regulating abilities. This is the radical view that Lovelock and Margulis have espoused. It can be thought of as the "strong Gaian model." 4. Alternatives to the Gaia Hypothesis The idea that climate and life influence one another is profoundly important. In some form or another, it has been recognized for a long time. Life and climate "grew up together" and influenced one another over most of earth history. But this is not to say that life somehow manages and self-optimizes its own environment. It is this idea -- the "strong form of Gaia" -- that is most controversial. 5. The Many Gaian Hypotheses "...it is unlikely that chance alone accounts for the fact that temperature, pH and the presence of compounds of nutrient elements have been, for immense periods, just those optimal for surface life. Rather, ... energy is expended by the biota to actively maintain these optima" (Lovelock and Margulis, 1974). 6. Modeling Gaia You can model feedbacks using the classic Gaia example of Daisyworld with Stella or using this interactive Java applet .  The latter is especially useful to get a first-order understanding of changing parameters.  The Stella model permit more sophisticated analysis. The hypothesis has been defined and argued in numerous ways, and has as many critics as adherents. It is in need of more explicit formulation before it can be examined and tested as a true scientific theory.   Two models emerge: The model that life influences planetary processes (i.e., it has a substantial effect on abiotic processes) has become known as the weak Gaia hypothesis .  This model is widely supported. The original Gaia hypothesis, that life controls planetary processes (i.e., life created Earth's system), has become known as the strong Gaia hypothesis .  It is not widely accepted. All materials © the Regents of the University of Michigan unless noted otherwise. Environment & Nature Nutrition & Food Health & Wellbeing Clothing & Textiles Economy & Business Utopia Newsletter telegram1 share The Gaia Hypothesis: What Does It Mean for Life on Earth? By Leonie Barghorn Categories: Environment & Nature May 11, 2021, 9:07 AM Some consider the Gaia hypothesis mere spiritual speculation – for others, it’s key to understanding life on Earth. Here’s the truth about the Gaia theory. In Greek mythology, Gaia was one of the oldest goddesses of all, the personification of the Earth itself. Thousands of years later, James Lovelock – a biochemist whose environmental work began in the 1970s – had a groundbreaking idea. He proposed we think of the Earth as a living being, a vast superorganism. Lovelock and his colleague, the microbiologist Lynn Margulis, named this theory the Gaia hypothesis . The Gaia Hypothesis: The Scientific Evidence The two scientists established that certain parameters on Earth have remained stable for hundreds of millions of years, including: oxygen levels in the atmosphere the salinity of the oceans the surface temperature of the Earth Lovelock and Margulis concluded that, to maintain this balance, all of Earth’s organic and inorganic constituents must be linked. This interconnectedness is sufficient, they argued, to consider the Earth itself to be a self-regulating organism . Its lifeforms don’t just adapt to the prevailing conditions on Earth – they actually drive and determine those conditions. The regulatory mechanisms involved are similar to those at work in the human body, for example. Welcome to Daisyworld To demonstrate the scientific validity of the Gaia hypothesis, Lovelock developed a computer model which he called Daisyworld. The Daisyworld model shows, for example, how a planet’s inhabitants can work to stabilize its temperature, even as the intensity of its sun steadily increases. Daisyworld is a planet similar to Earth, with a heat source – a sun – just like ours. However, Daisyworld has only two lifeforms: black daisies and white daisies . Initially, the sun’s light is faint, and only the black daisies can survive. They are better suited to lower temperatures, because their darker color reflects less light, and they are able to absorb more sunlight. As the black daisies absorb the sunlight, the planet itself slowly heats up. As it gets warmer, however, the population of white daisies increases. Their lighter color gives them an advantage at higher temperatures because it doesn’t absorb unnecessary heat. White daisies, consequently, tend to cool the planet, because they reflect more sunlight back into space . The resulting negative feedback loop between the two species of daisies means that the temperature on the planet remains relatively constant, even as the intensity of the sun increases. Daisyworld is thus an example of a self-regulating system . This simple planet can sustain a balanced biosphere for eons, until the sun itself eventually becomes too hot. How Our Biosphere Influences the Climate Of course, our Earth is far more complex than Daisyworld. There are countless real-life feedback loops which show how the biosphere affects the climate: Warmer temperatures encourage the growth of algae. They produce sulfur compounds that help clouds to form in the Earth’s atmosphere. The clouds reflect some of the incoming sunlight and, in turn, cool the Earth. Oceans receive a constant supply of minerals from rivers and hydrothermal vents on the ocean floor. Nevertheless, the salinity of the oceans remains constant. This is due, on the one hand, to the fact that minerals are constantly deposited back onto the ocean floor. However, there are also microorganisms which actively extract minerals from the seawater . Through photosynthesis, plants consume CO 2 , which helps to regulate the atmosphere’s temperature via the greenhouse effect . If CO 2 levels – and thus temperatures – increase, more plants are able to grow in regions further from the equator. However, more plants also consume more CO 2 . Consequently, CO 2 levels in the atmosphere decrease, and temperatures fall again. However, these examples are only a tiny fraction of the incredibly complex ecological relationships on our planet. Is there enough evidence to confirm the Gaia hypothesis? The Gaia Hypothesis: Criticism and Consensus The Gaia hypothesis continues to be popular in more spiritual circles, but there is little scientific consensus on its validity. One reason is simply that the Earth is so complex, and the Gaia theory so broad, that it’s virtually impossible to definitively prove or disprove the hypothesis. This is the main reason that criticism of the concept is so widespread. The scientific arguments against the Gaia hypothesis are well summed-up in Toby Tyrell’s book On Gaia: A Critical Investigation of the Relationship between Life and Earth . Examining evidence from fields such as geology, biology, and oceanography (to name but a few!), he concludes that the feedback loops which are undeniably present in our biosphere are not sufficient to reliably and eternally stabilize habitable conditions on Earth. “My aim was to determine whether the Gaia hypothesis is a credible explanation of how life and environment interact on Earth – I found it is not.” The book – which is actually a readable, accessible introduction to the evolution of life on Earth – instead proposes co-evolution as a more valid theory. It is available in many book shops and on Amazon **. Nevertheless, the Gaia hypothesis is undeniably useful as a metaphor to raise awareness for the interconnectedness of all lifeforms. It may be a stretch, scientifically speaking, to describe the Earth as a superorganism like a colony of bees . But we are only beginning to realize the true importance of biodiversity for the climate and for humanity’s own survival. From this perspective, the Gaia hypothesis is more relevant than ever . The Gaia Theory Is Not an Excuse for Climate Change Denial In the face of epochal, life-threatening climate change, we might find the Gaia hypothesis reassuring. If the Earth is self-regulating, like a living thing, surely everything will balance out eventually? But even if the Gaia theory is true: Living things can get sick . James Lovelock himself admitted this over ten years ago. In his 2009 book The Vanishing Face of Gaia: A Final Warning , he proposes that “Gaia’s illness could be called polyanthroponemia, where humans overpopulate until they do more harm than good.” This seems less a theory and more a sad statement of fact. As we all know, humans continue to disrupt the Earth’s own regulatory mechanisms. By clearing forests , for instance, we prevent them from compensating for increasing atmospheric CO 2 levels. There are numerous ecological tipping points in the Earth’s biosphere. When these are exceeded, irreversible changes are set in motion. For example, as the climate warms, permafrost increasingly thaws, releasing CO 2 and methane. The resulting greenhouse effect warms the Earth further, so more permafrost thaws, and the cycle continues. And even if the Earth as a whole is self-sustaining, that doesn’t necessarily mean that every single species will survive. Some scientists are already warning of the imminent extinction of mankind . We will have to change ourselves to save the planet – because the planet isn’t going to save us. Eco-Anxiety: Climate Change Stress and How to Cope What Would Happen if Bees Went Extinct? These Ten Things Would Disappear 8 Things You Can Do to Save the Ocean This article was adapted and translated from German to English by Will Tayler . You can read the original here: Gaia-Hypothese: Einfach und verständlich für Laien erklärt Do you like this post? Tags: Climate Change Green Living Natural Science Clarified Gaia Hypothesis Gaia hypothesis The Gaia (pronounced GAY-ah) hypothesis is the idea that Earth is a living organism and can regulate its own environment. This idea argues that Earth is able to maintain conditions that are favorable for life to survive on it, and that it is the living things on Earth that give the planet this ability. Mother Earth The idea that Earth and its atmosphere are some sort of "superorganism" was actually first proposed by Scottish geologist (a person specializing in the study of Earth) James Hutton (1726–1797), although this was not one of his more accepted and popular ideas. As a result, no one really pursued this notion until some 200 years later, when the English chemist James Lovelock (1919– ) put forth a similar idea in his 1979 book, Gaia: A New Look at Life on Earth. Gaia is the name of the Greek goddess of Earth and mother of the Titans. In modern times, the name has come to symbolize "Earth Mother" or "Living Earth." In this book, Lovelock proposed that Earth's biosphere (all the parts of Earth that make up the living world) acts as a single living system that if left alone, can regulate itself. As to the name Gaia, the story goes that Lovelock was walking in the countryside surrounding his home in Wilshire, England, and met his neighbor, English novelist William Golding (1911–1993), author of Lord of the Flies and several other books. Telling Golding of his new theory, he then asked his advice about choosing a suitable name for it, and the result of this meeting was that the term "Gaia" was chosen because of its real connection to the Greek goddess who pulled the living world together out of chaos or complete disorder. Origin of Earth's atmosphere Lovelock arrived at this hypothesis by studying Earth's neighboring planets, Mars and Venus. Suggesting that chemistry and physics seemed to argue that these barren and hostile planets should have an atmosphere just like that of Earth, Lovelock stated that Earth's atmosphere is different because it has life on it. Both Mars and Venus have an atmosphere with about 95 percent carbon dioxide, while Earth's is about 79 percent nitrogen and 21 percent oxygen. He explained this dramatic difference by saying that Earth's atmosphere was probably very much like that of its neighbors at first, and that it was a world with hardly any life on it. The only form that did exist was what many consider to be the first forms of life—anaerobic (pronounced ANN-ay-roe-bik) bacteria that lived in the ocean. This type of bacteria cannot live in an oxygen environment, and its only job is to convert nitrates to nitrogen gas. This accounts for the beginnings of a nitrogen build-up in Earth's atmosphere. Words to Know Biosphere: The sum total of all lifeforms on Earth and the interaction among those lifeforms. Feedback: Information that tells a system what the results of its actions are. Homeostasis: State of being in balance; the tendency of an organism to maintain constant internal conditions despite large changes in the external environment. Photosynthesis: Chemical process by which plants containing chlorophyll use sunlight to manufacture their own food by converting carbon dioxide and water to carbohydrates, releasing oxygen as a by-product. Symbiosis: A pattern in which two or more organisms live in close connection with each other, often to the benefit of both or all organisms. The oxygen essential to life as we know it did not start to accumulate in the atmosphere until organisms that were capable of photosynthesis evolved. Photosynthesis is the process that some algae and all plants use to convert chemically the Sun's light into food. This process uses carbon dioxide and water to make energy-packed glucose, and it gives off oxygen as a by-product. These very first photosynthesizers were a blue-green algae called cyanobacteria (pronounced SIGH-uh-no-bak-teer-eea) that live in water. Eventually, these organisms produced so much oxygen that they put the older anaerobic bacteria out of business. As a result, the only place that anaerobic bacteria could survive was on the deep-sea floor (as well as in heavily water-logged soil and in our own intestines). Love-lock's basic point was that the existence of life (bacteria) eventually made Earth a very different place by giving it an atmosphere. Lovelock eventually went beyond the notion that life can change the environment and proposed the controversial Gaia hypothesis. He said that Gaia is the "Living Earth" and that Earth itself should be viewed as being alive. Like any living thing, it always strives to maintain constant or stable conditions for itself, called homeostasis (pronounced hoe-mee-o-STAY-sis). In the Gaia hypothesis, it is the presence and activities of life that keep Earth in homeostasis and allow it to regulate its systems and maintain steady-state conditions. Cooperation over competition Lovelock was supported in his hypothesis by American microbiologist Lynn Margulis (1918– ) who became his principal collaborator. Margulis not only provided support, but she brought her own scientific ability and achievements to the Gaia hypothesis. In her 1981 book, Symbiosis in Cell Evolution , Margulis had put forth the then-unheard of theory that life as we know it today evolved more from cooperation than from competition. She argued that the cellular ancestors of today's plants and animals were groups of primitive, formless bacteria cells called prokaryotes (pronounced pro-KAR-ee-oats). She stated that these simplest of bacteria formed symbiotic relationships—relationships that benefitted both organisms—which eventually led to the evolution of new lifeforms. Her theory is called endosymbiosis (pronounced en-doe-sim-bye-O-sis) and is based on the fact that bacteria routinely take and transfer bits of genetic material from each other. Margulis then argued that simple bacteria eventually evolved into more complex eukaryotic (pronounced you-kar-ee-AH-tik) cells or cells with a nucleus. These types of cells form the basic structure of plants and animals. Her then-radical but now-accepted idea was that life evolved more out of cooperation (which is what symbiosis is all about) than it did out of competition (in which only the strong survive and reproduce). The simple prokaryotes did this by getting together and forming symbiotic groups or systems that increased their chances of survival. According to Margulis then, symbiosis, or the way different organisms adapt to living together to the benefit of each, was the major mechanism for change on Earth. Most scientists now agree with her thesis that oxygen-using bacteria joined together with fermenting bacteria to form the basis of a type of new cell that eventually evolved into complex eukaryotes. For the Gaia hypothesis, the Margulis concept of symbiosis has proven to be a useful explanatory tool. Since it explains the origin and the evolution of life on Earth (by stating that symbiosis is the mechanism of change), it applies also to what continues to happen as the process of evolution goes on and on. Gaia explained The main idea behind the Gaia hypothesis can be both simple and complex. Often, several similar examples or analogies concerning the bodies of living organisms are used to make the Gaia concept easier to understand. One of these states that we could visualize Earth's rain forests as the lungs of the planet since they exchange oxygen and carbon dioxide. Earth's atmosphere could be thought of as its respiratory system, and its streams of moving water and larger rivers like its circulatory system, since they bring in clean water and flush out the system. Some say that the planet actually "breathes" because it contracts and expands with the Moon's gravitational pull, and the seasonal changes we all experience are said to reflect our own rhythmic bodily cycles. Many of these analogies are useful in trying to explain the general idea behind the Gaia hypothesis, although they should not be taken literally. Lovelock, however, has stated that Earth is very much like the human body in that both can be viewed as a system of interacting components. He argues that just as our bodies are made up of billions of cells working together as a single living being, so too are the billions of different lifeforms on Earth working together (although unconsciously) to form a single, living "superorganism." Further, just as the processes or physiology of our bodies has its major systems (such as the nervous system, circulatory system, respiratory system, etc.), so, says Lovelock, Earth has its own "geophysiology." This geophysiology is made up of four main components: atmosphere (air), biosphere (all lifeforms), geosphere (soil and rock), and hydrosphere (water). Finally, just as our own physiological health depends on all of our systems being in good working condition and, above all, working together well, so, too, does Earth's geophysiology depend on its systems working in harmony. Life is the regulating mechanism Lovelock claims that all of the living things on Earth provide it with this necessary harmony. He states that these living things, altogether, control the physical and chemical conditions of the environment, and therefore it is life itself that provides the feedback that is so necessary to regulating something. Feedback mechanisms can detect and reverse any unwanted changes. A typical example of feedback is the thermostat in most homes. We set it to maintain a comfortable indoor temperature, usually somewhere in the range between 65°F (18°C) and 70°F (21°C). The thermostat is designed so that when the temperature falls below a certain setting, the furnace is turned on and begins to heat the house. When that temperature is reached and the thermostat senses it, the furnace is switched off. Our own bodies have several of these feedback mechanisms, all of which are geared to maintaining conditions within a certain proper and balanced range. For Earth's critical balance, Lovelock says that it is the biosphere, or all of life on Earth, that functions as our thermostat or regulator. He says that the atmosphere, the oceans, the climate, and even the crust of Earth are regulated at a state that is comfortable for life because of the behavior of living organisms . This is the revolutionary lesson that the Gaia hypothesis wants to teach. It says that all of Earth's major components, such as the amount of oxygen and carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, the saltiness of the oceans, and the temperature of our surface is regulated or kept in proper balance by the activities of the life it supports. He also states that this feedback system is self-regulating and that it happens automatically. As evidence that, if left alone, Earth can regulate itself, he asserts that it is the activity of living organisms that maintain the delicate balance between atmospheric carbon dioxide and oxygen. In a way, Love-lock argues that it is life itself that maintains the conditions favorable for the continuation of life. For example, he contends that it is no accident that the level of oxygen is kept remarkably constant in the atmosphere at 21 percent. Lovelock further offers several examples of cycles in the environment that work to keep things on an even keel. Lovelock also warns that since Earth has the natural capacity to keep things in a stable range, human tampering with Earth's environmental balancing mechanisms places everyone at great risk. While environmentalists insist that human activity (such as industrial policies that result in harming Earth's ozone layer) is upsetting Earth's ability to regulate itself, others who feel differently argue that Earth can continue to survive very well no matter what humans do exactly because of its built-in adaptability. Earth as seen from space An important aspect about the Gaia hypothesis is that it offers scientists a new model to consider. Most agree that such a different type of model was probably not possible to consider seriously until humans went into space. However, once people could travel beyond the atmosphere of Earth and put enough distance between them and their planet, then they could view their home from an extra-terrestrial viewpoint. No doubt that the 1960s photographs of the blue, green, and white ball of life floating in the total darkness of outer space made both scientists and the public think of their home planet a little differently than they ever had before. These pictures of Earth must have brought to mind the notion that it resembled a single organism. Although the Gaia hypothesis is still very controversial and has not been established scientifically (by being tested and proven quantitatively), it has already shown us the valuable notion of just how interdependent everything is on Earth. We now recognize that Earth's biological, physical, and chemical components or major parts regularly interact with and mutually affect one another, whether by accident or on purpose. Finally, it places great emphasis on what promises to be the planet's greatest future problem—the quality of Earth's environment and the role humans will play in Earth's destiny. [ See also Biosphere ; Ecosystem ] User Contributions: Comment about this article, ask questions, or add new information about this topic:. Morphology, properties, and regimes of migrational–mycelial agrochernozems with different ground moistening (Belgorod oblast) Genesis and Geography of Soils Published: 06 December 2016 Volume 49 , pages 1344–1354, ( 2016 ) Cite this article I. I. Lebedeva 1 , G. S. Bazykina 1 , A. M. Grebennikov 1 , L. G. Smirnova 2 & S. I. Tyutyunov 2   31 Accesses Explore all metrics Agrochernozems of a catena (local divide, backslope, and footslope positions on a gentle slope of southern aspect) on the fields of Belgorodskoe farm were studied. The soils are developed from lithologically heterogeneous sediments with temporal accumulation of precipitation water above the lithological contact. A close correlation between the morphology and properties of the soils and the character of their water regime in different positions of the catena was found. Agrochernozems of the divide belong to the migrational–mycelial type of forest-steppe chernozems according to their humus profile, water regime, and slightly differentiated distribution of carbonates. Agrochernozems on the backslope with a higher ground moistening have a more contrasting water regime with the topsoil drying in the summer, a sharper decrease in the humus content down the soil profile, and a distinct carbonate-accumulative horizon with a smooth upper boundary, which makes them closer to the type of steppe agrochernozems. The soils of the footslope are characterized by alternation of the percolative and exudative water regimes; these soils are classified as quasigley agrochernozems with a shortened humus horizon and with dispersed and pendant forms of pedogenic carbonates. The character of moistening, morphology, and properties of the studied soils allow us to state that their genesis is controlled by the local ecological conditions with minimal influence of erosional processes on the slope. This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access. Access this article Subscribe and save. Get 10 units per month Download Article/Chapter or eBook 1 Unit = 1 Article or 1 Chapter Cancel anytime Price includes VAT (Russian Federation) Instant access to the full article PDF. Rent this article via DeepDyve Institutional subscriptions Similar content being viewed by others Change of forest–steppe chernozems under the influence of shelterbelts in the south of the central russian upland, recent soil-forming processes in postagrogenic soddy-podzolic soils of the udmurt republic. Changes in the properties of solonetzic soil complexes in the dry steppe zone under anthropogenic impacts E. A. 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Tyutyunov, 2016, published in Pochvovedenie, 2016, No. 12, pp. 1433–1444. Rights and permissions Reprints and permissions About this article Lebedeva, I.I., Bazykina, G.S., Grebennikov, A.M. et al. Morphology, properties, and regimes of migrational–mycelial agrochernozems with different ground moistening (Belgorod oblast). Eurasian Soil Sc. 49 , 1344–1354 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1134/S1064229316120097 Download citation Received : 13 April 2015 Published : 06 December 2016 Issue Date : December 2016 DOI : https://doi.org/10.1134/S1064229316120097 Share this article Anyone you share the following link with will be able to read this content: Sorry, a shareable link is not currently available for this article. 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