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Book cover of Earth's Biosphere: Evolution, Dynamics, and Change by Vaclav Smil

Earth's Biosphere: Evolution, Dynamics, and Change

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Author:

Vaclav Smil

Number Of Reads:

93

Language:

English

Category:

Natural Science

Section:

Pages:

357

Quality:

excellent

Views:

1275

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Book Description

Smil, in a presentation marked by balance and clarity, synthesizes the field of science dealing with the biosphere. It is an interdisciplinary one, combining organic chemistry, geology, solar physics, microbiology, zoology, and more. Whatever characteristics the biosphere displays on a global scale depend on living matter's fundamental chemistry, so Smil diagrams the structural backbone of cells - molecules such as cellulose or DNA. Moving next through types of metabolism, such as the ATP cycle, Smil explains the resultant chemical products and how they become fixed or cycled through the ground, water, or atmosphere. Addressing concerns about human influences on the biosphere, Smil describes them, but he is a scientist to the core (at the University of Manitoba) and is hesitant to proclaim doom as the certain outcome. That scientific humility only enhances Smil's work. A superior, comprehensive survey.

Author portrait of Vaclav Smil

Vaclav Smil

Vaclav Smil is currently a Distinguished Professor in the Faculty of Environment at the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg, Canada. He completed his graduate studies at the Faculty of Natural Sciences of Carolinum University in Prague and at the College of Earth and Mineral Sciences of the Pennsylvania State University. His interdisciplinary research interests encompass a broad area of energy, environmental, food, population, economic, historical and public policy studies, and he had also applied these approaches to energy, food and environmental affairs of China.

He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada (Science Academy) and the first non-American to receive the American Association for the Advancement of Science Award for Public Understanding of Science and Technology. He has been an invited speaker in more than 250 conferences and workshops in the USA, Canada, Europe, Asia and Africa, has lectured at many universities in North America, Europe and East Asia and has worked as a consultant for many US, EU and international institutions. His wife Eva is a physician and his son David is an organic synthetic chemist.

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