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A beach scene on Earth, simultaneously showing the lithosphere (ground), hydrosphere (ocean) and atmosphere (air). The term "biosphere" was coined in 1875 by geologist Eduard Suess, who defined it as the place on Earth's surface where life dwells.
University of Arizona Biosphere 2 is an American Earth system science research facility located in Oracle, Arizona. Its mission is to serve as a center for research, outreach, teaching, and lifelong learning about Earth, its living systems, and its place in the universe. [ 1 ]
J.B. Lamarck defined the term biosphere. When modern biologists mention the biosphere they usually mean the best part of the Earth's crust, which is the lithosphere and hydrosphere, and of the lower parts of the Earth's lower parts, which is the troposphere. All these together and the living organisms make up the biosphere.
Environments in which subsurface life has been found [1]. The deep biosphere is the part of the biosphere that resides below the first few meters of the ocean's surface. It extends 10 kilometers below the continental surface and 21 kilometers below the sea surface, at temperatures that may reach beyond 120 °C (248 °F) [2] which is comparable to the maximum temperature where a metabolically ...
At long irregular intervals, Earth's biosphere suffers a catastrophic die-off, a mass extinction, [9] often comprising an accumulation of smaller extinction events over a relatively brief period. [10] The first known mass extinction was the Great Oxidation Event 2.4 billion years ago, which killed most of the planet's obligate anaerobes.
The increase in oxygen concentrations had wide ranging and significant impacts on Earth's biosphere. Most significantly, the rise of oxygen and the oxidative depletion of greenhouse gases (especially atmospheric methane ) due to the GOE led to an icehouse Earth that caused a mass extinction of anaerobic microbes , but paved the way for the ...
The five components of the climate system all interact. They are the atmosphere, the hydrosphere, the cryosphere, the lithosphere and the biosphere. [1]: 1451 Earth's climate system is a complex system with five interacting components: the atmosphere (air), the hydrosphere (water), the cryosphere (ice and permafrost), the lithosphere (earth's upper rocky layer) and the biosphere (living things).
The total amount of DNA base pairs on Earth, as a possible approximation of global biodiversity, is estimated at 5.0 x 10 37, and weighs 50 billion tonnes. [7] In comparison, the total mass of the biosphere has been estimated to be as much as 4 TtC (trillion tons of carbon). [8]