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
3 - Chemical reactions, enzyme catalysts, and stable isotopes
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
A corollary to this law shows how the chemical equilibrium varies with temperature – namely, how, as the temperature increases, more of the one compound is formed at the expense of the other, or vice versa. This corollary can be stated as follows: At low temperature the greater yield is always of that product whose formation is accompanied by evolution of heat.
Jacobus H. van’t Hoff, Nobel Prize Lecture, 1901In explaining the relation between temperature and chemical reactions in his Etude de Dynamique Chemique in 1884, Jacobus van’t Hoff built a conceptual bridge between the concepts of thermodynamics, which had emerged in cogent fashion during the second half of the nineteenth century, and chemical equilibrium, which had emerged from studies on reversible reactions earlier in that century. In the quote above from his Nobel Prize lecture, van’t Hoff refers to the concept of exothermic reactions as being the “favored” outcome of a chemical interaction, which we now understand to be predicted by thermodynamic laws. Chemical transformations within the earth system must follow the same thermodynamic laws that were presented in the last chapter and to which van’t Hoff alluded in the statement above. In this chapter, we will build on those thermodynamic laws in order to establish a foundation for the more detailed considerations of biochemistry and metabolism. More specifically, we will delve into the theory underlying chemical reactions, their sensitivity to temperature, and their biochemical association with protein catalysts.
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- Terrestrial Biosphere-Atmosphere Fluxes , pp. 38 - 63Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2014