Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- List of symbols
- 1 The general nature of biosphere-atmosphere fluxes
- 2 Thermodynamics, work, and energy
- 3 Chemical reactions, enzyme catalysts, and stable isotopes
- 4 Control over metabolic fluxes
- 5 Modeling the metabolic CO2 flux
- 6 Diffusion and continuity
- 7 Boundary layer and stomatal control over leaf fluxes
- 8 Leaf structure and function
- 9 Water transport within the soil-plant-atmosphere continuum
- 10 Leaf and canopy energy budgets
- 11 Canopy structure and radiative transfer
- 12 Vertical structure and mixing of the atmosphere
- 13 Wind and turbulence
- 14 Observations of turbulent fluxes
- 15 Modeling of fluxes at the canopy and landscape scales
- 16 Soil fluxes of CO2, CH4, and NOx
- 17 Fluxes of biogenic volatile compounds between plants and the atmosphere
- 18 Stable isotope variants as tracers for studying biosphere-atmosphere exchange
- References
- Index
- Plate Section
1 - The general nature of biosphere-atmosphere fluxes
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2014
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- List of symbols
- 1 The general nature of biosphere-atmosphere fluxes
- 2 Thermodynamics, work, and energy
- 3 Chemical reactions, enzyme catalysts, and stable isotopes
- 4 Control over metabolic fluxes
- 5 Modeling the metabolic CO2 flux
- 6 Diffusion and continuity
- 7 Boundary layer and stomatal control over leaf fluxes
- 8 Leaf structure and function
- 9 Water transport within the soil-plant-atmosphere continuum
- 10 Leaf and canopy energy budgets
- 11 Canopy structure and radiative transfer
- 12 Vertical structure and mixing of the atmosphere
- 13 Wind and turbulence
- 14 Observations of turbulent fluxes
- 15 Modeling of fluxes at the canopy and landscape scales
- 16 Soil fluxes of CO2, CH4, and NOx
- 17 Fluxes of biogenic volatile compounds between plants and the atmosphere
- 18 Stable isotope variants as tracers for studying biosphere-atmosphere exchange
- References
- Index
- Plate Section
Summary
The atmosphere and its manifold changes have held fascination for men and women ever since human beings have trod this Earth. Its study played an integral role in the evolution of natural philosophy from which all of our present sciences have sprung.
F. Sherwood Rowland, Nobel Prize Banquet Speech, 1995It is widely believed that the abundance of the principal gases N2 and O2 is determined by equilibrium chemistry. One of the larger problems in the atmospheric sciences is that of reconciling that belief with the uncomfortable fact that these same gases are cycled by the Biosphere with a geometric mean residence time in thousands of years.
James Lovelock and Lynn Margulis (1974)Sherwood Rowland’s comment at the banquet held to honor receipt, along with Paul Crutzen and Mario Molina, of the 1995 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, places the atmosphere at the center of some of the most influential scientific discoveries to have been made during human history. Within Rowland’s comment we can recognize Thales of Miletus who in the sixth century BC struggled to understand the different states of water and the process of evaporation, Lavoisier in the late eighteenth century discerning the exchange of oxygen between organisms and the atmosphere, and Arrhenius in the early part of the twentieth century calculating the relation between the carbon dioxide content of the atmosphere and the earth’s surface temperature. The importance of the atmosphere in the history of natural philosophy is clearly underscored by these seminal studies. Within all of these studies, however, is the undeniable influence of the earth’s surface and in particular the earth’s biosphere, on the chemical composition and dynamics of the atmosphere. The two are linked in a type of “co-dependency” in which processes and change can only be understood through studies that include both biotic and abiotic systems. The requisite nature of the nexus between the biotic and abiotic domains of the earth system is recognizable, albeit in extreme form, in the controversial concept of “Gaian homeostasis” laid out by James Lovelock and Lynn Margulis in 1974. While we (the authors) do not, in its entirety, endorse the tenets of a Gaian earth, we do recognize the value of this concept in defining the biosphere and atmosphere as coupled and interdependent systems. It is this interdependency, and the processes that maintain it, that will be the focus of this book.
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- Terrestrial Biosphere-Atmosphere Fluxes , pp. 1 - 14Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2014