["\u0420\u0415\u041b\u0418\u0417 \u041f\u041e\u0414\u0413\u041e\u0422\u041e\u0412\u0418\u041b\u0410 \u0413\u0420\u0423\u041f\u041f\u0410 \\\"What's News\\\" VK.COM\/WSNWS THE LIVING EARTH 199 See also: Evolution by natural selection 24\u201331 \u25a0 Global warming 202\u2013203 Receding glaciers \u25a0 The Keeling Curve 240\u2013241 \u25a0 Ozone depletion 260\u2013261 \u25a0 Spring creep 274\u2013279 and bird migration glaciers in 1840. The same year, he Glaciers converge on Piz Argient, When the last glacial period visited geologist William Buckland a mountain in the Swiss Alps. Like began to end, around 26,500 in Scotland to investigate glacial others in the Alps, these glaciers were years ago, Earth was much features there, prompting Scottish once much more extensive than they colder than it is today. Much glaciologist James Forbes to begin are now, and they continue to shrink. of North America and northern similar research in the French Alps. Eurasia was covered with ice Aerial surveys in the 1920s and sheets. The environment was Some quarters, such as the 1930s confirmed the extent of their so harsh that most birds Catholic Church, still argued that vast ice sheets\u2014now defined tended to live in subtropical glacial striations had been caused as areas of glacier ice exceeding and tropical regions where by a great flood or that large silt and 19,300 sq\u00a0miles (50,000 sq\u00a0km); ice there was more food. rock deposits had been transported caps, such as Iceland\u2019s Vatnaj\u00f6kull, by icebergs swept along by the flood. are smaller. As temperatures began From the 1860s, however, there was rising, the ice sheets started wide support for Agassiz\u2019s glaciation Further evidence revealed that to shrink, uncovering a new theory and the idea that glaciers in there had not been one single ice landscape. Ice-free ground the Swiss Alps and Norway had age, but at least five major ice ages and short, wet summers were once extended much further. It was in Earth\u2019s long history. The most ideal for insects, and birds also accepted that a sheet of ice recent, the Quaternary Ice Age, began to move in, too, to had once spread across Europe, and began 2.58 million years ago and is take advantage of this food south from the Arctic through much ongoing. In the last 750,000 years, supply. When days got shorter of North America, with catastrophic there have been eight ice advances in fall, some birds stayed on implications for plants and animals. (glacial periods) and retreats for the winter, but others (interglacial periods). During the last returned south. By the late 1800s and early glacial period, which ended 10,000\u2013 1900s, as more expeditions to both 15,000 years ago, ice sheets were up The distances flown by Greenland and Antarctica were to 2\u00bd miles (4 km) thick, and the sea birds returning to their homes undertaken, it became known that level was 390 ft (120 m) lower. \u25a0 grew longer as the ice sheets both areas were still covered in ice. retreated farther, eventually developing into long-distance spring and fall migrations between the tropics and northern latitudes. Common birds that undertake the journey include swallows, warblers, and cuckoos. A male Baltimore oriole perches on a tree fern in Costa Rica. The species flies north to breed in March and returns to the tropics in August or September.","\u0420\u0415\u041b\u0418\u0417 \u041f\u041e\u0414\u0413\u041e\u0422\u041e\u0412\u0418\u041b\u0410 \u0413\u0420\u0423\u041f\u041f\u0410 \\\"What's News\\\" VK.COM\/WSNWS 200 OTTHHNEETRBHEOEIUSMNANDPOATTRHOYILNMIGANREK BIOGEOGRAPHY IN CONTEXT T he places where animals In the 18th century, as explorers and plants live often vary recorded the plants and animals KEY FIGURE in a regular manner along they saw, a picture of geographic Alfred Russel Wallace geographic gradients of latitude, change had begun to emerge. On (1823\u20131913) elevation, and habitat type. The the great 1831\u201336 expedition of study of this variation is known HMS Beagle, Charles Darwin saw BEFORE as biogeography. One branch species of birds on the Falkland 1831\u201336 Darwin\u2019s studies (phytogeography) examines the Islands that did not live on on the voyage of HMS Beagle distribution of plants, whereas mainland South America, giant confirm that many animals the other (zoogeography) analyzes tortoises that were unique to the living in one area are not found the distribution of animals. British Galapagos Islands, and marsupials in similar habitats elsewhere. naturalist and biologist Alfred such as Australia\u2019s kangaroos. New Russel Wallace is widely regarded pieces of the biogeographic jigsaw AFTER as the \u201cfather of biogeography.\u201d were falling into place. 1874 British zoologist Philip Sclater categorizes birds by Zoogeographic regions of the world zoogeographic regions. NEARCTIC PALEARCTIC 1876 Alfred Russel Wallace publishes The Geographical AFROTROPICS INDOMALAYA Distribution of Animals\u2014the WALLACE\u2019S LINE first extensive publication NEOTROPICS on biogeography. AUSTRALASIA 1975 Hungarian biogeographer Wallace\u2019s six zoogeographic regions began with the Miklos Udvardy proposes line he proposed in 1859 to mark the division of fauna dividing biogeographic realms between Southeast Asia and Australasia. into biogeographic provinces. 2015 Mexican evolutionary biologist J.J. Morrone proposes an International Code of Area Nomenclature for biogeography.","\u0420\u0415\u041b\u0418\u0417 \u041f\u041e\u0414\u0413\u041e\u0422\u041e\u0412\u0418\u041b\u0410 \u0413\u0420\u0423\u041f\u041f\u0410 \\\"What's News\\\" VK.COM\/WSNWS THE LIVING EARTH 201 See also: Evolution by natural selection 24\u201331 \u25a0 Island biogeography 144\u2013149 \u25a0 The distribution of species over space and time 162\u2013163 \u25a0 Biomes 206\u2013209 From 1848, Wallace conducted All of Siberia is in the Palearctic Alfred Russel Wallace years of fieldwork in South America region, and the Siberian and Southeast Asia. He researched white birch trees depicted here are Explorer, naturalist, biologist, the feeding and breeding behavior part of a subdivision called the East geographer, and social and migratory habits of thousands Siberian taiga. reformer Alfred Russel of species, paying specific attention Wallace left school at 14, to animal distribution compared Bali and Lombok); this separates and trained as a surveyor with the presence or absence of Asian fauna from the Australasian. in London before becoming geographical barriers, such as seas He found that larger mammals and a teacher. He became between islands. He concluded that most birds did not cross the line. fascinated with insects after the number of organisms living in a For example, tigers and rhinos live meeting British entomologist community depends on the food only on the Asian side; babirusas, Henry Bates. The pair available in that specific habitat. marsupials, andsulfur-breasted ventured to the Amazon cockatoos only on the other side. Basin in 1848 on a four-year Wallace\u2019s Line He also highlighted the sharp collecting expedition. Trips to During his 1854\u201362 expedition differences between animals in the Orinoco River and the to the Malay Archipelago, Wallace North and South America. Malay Archipelago followed. collected an astonishing 126,000 Wallace arrived at the same specimens, many of them from In 1876, Wallace proposed six conclusion as Charles Darwin species unknown to Western separate zoogeographic regions: on the origin of species by science, including 2 percent of the Nearctic (North America); Neotropics natural selection, and they world\u2019s bird species. He regarded (South America); Palaearctic presented their papers jointly biogeography as support for the (Europe, Africa north of the Sahara in 1858. A world authority on theory of evolution by means of Desert, and Central, North, and East fauna distribution, Wallace natural selection. One of Wallace\u2019s Asia); Afrotropics (Africa south of also raised awareness about important findings was the marked the Sahara Desert); Indomalaya problems caused by human difference in bird species on either (South and Southeast Asia); and impact on the environment. side of what was to become known Australasia (Australia, New Guinea, as the Wallace Line, which runs and New Zealand). Today Wallace\u2019s Key works along the Makassar Strait (between regions, with the addition of the islands of Borneo and Sulawesi) Oceania (the islands of the Pacific 1869 The Malay Archipelago and the Lombok Strait (between Ocean) and Antarctica, are known 1870 Contributions to the as biogeographic realms. \u25a0 Theory of Natural Selection 1876 The Geographical Distribution of Animals 1878 Tropical Nature, and Other Essays 1880 Island Life","\u0420\u0415\u041b\u0418\u0417 \u041f\u041e\u0414\u0413\u041e\u0422\u041e\u0412\u0418\u041b\u0410 \u0413\u0420\u0423\u041f\u041f\u0410 \\\"What's News\\\" VK.COM\/WSNWS 202 IIGSTLNIOS'TBHAAALPPWRPEEADNRIIMCNITGNI.OGN. GLOBAL WARMING IN CONTEXT I n 1896, Swedish chemist \u201cgreenhouse gases,\u201d as they are Svante Arrhenius became now known, and believed that KEY FIGURE the first person to argue that increasing levels of CO2 would Svante Arrhenius carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions raise Earth\u2019s temperature. More (1859\u20131927) caused by human beings could specifically, he estimated that if lead to global warming. Arrhenius levels of carbon dioxide increased BEFORE thought that the average ground by 2.5 to 3 times, Arctic regions of 1824 French physicist Joseph temperature could be influenced the world would see temperature Fourier suggests that Earth\u2019s by carbon dioxide and other increases of 14\u201316\u00b0F (8\u20139\u00b0C). atmosphere traps the Sun\u2019s heat like a greenhouse. The greenhouse effect 1859 Irish physicist John SUN Water vapor and other gases in Earth\u2019s Tyndall provides experimental atmosphere, such as carbon dioxide and evidence to support earlier methane, trap heat from the Sun and hypotheses that atmospheric infrared radiation from Earth, raising gases absorb radiant heat. the planet\u2019s temperature. AFTER Solar radiation Some heat escapes 1976 American scientist SPHERE into space Charles Keeling proves that Some heat is trapped between 1959 and 1971 in the atmosphere carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere increased by EARTH\u2019S ATMO about 3.4 percent each year. rIandfiraatrieodn 2006 In Field Notes from a Catastrophe, journalist Elizabeth Kolbert tells the stories of people and places impacted by climate change. EARTH","\u0420\u0415\u041b\u0418\u0417 \u041f\u041e\u0414\u0413\u041e\u0422\u041e\u0412\u0418\u041b\u0410 \u0413\u0420\u0423\u041f\u041f\u0410 \\\"What's News\\\" VK.COM\/WSNWS THE LIVING EARTH 203 See also: Environmental feedback loops 224\u2013225 \u25a0 Renewable energy 300\u2013305 The effects of \u25a0 The Green Movement 308\u2013309 \u25a0 Halting climate change 316\u2013321 global warming Arrhenius was building on the The atmosphere may act like Since the end of the 19th work of scientists Joseph Fourier the glass of a greenhouse \u2026 century, carbon dioxide (CO2) and John Tyndall earlier in the [raising] the mean temperature in the atmosphere has 19th century. Fourier had wondered increased by about 25 percent, why Earth was not a freezing of Earth\u2019s surface. and the average global wasteland, when the Sun was too Nils Ekholm temperature by around 0.9\u00b0F far away to heat it to its current (0.5\u00b0C). Scientific evidence temperature. He knew that heated Swedish meteorologist (1848\u20131923) proves that these changes surfaces\u2014such as the surface of have contributed to melting Earth\u2014emit thermal energy, and average 59\u00b0F (15\u00b0C), although in glaciers and sea ice followed that the thermal energy radiating recent decades human activities by rising sea levels\u2014around back into space should result in that release greenhouse gases 8 in (20 cm) since 1880\u2014as colder temperatures on Earth. have pushed this figure higher. well as damage to coral reefs. Something was regulating the For example, the 10 warmest years Other phenomena include temperature, and Fourier theorized on record have occurred since 1998. longer wildfire seasons, more that Earth\u2019s atmosphere, made extreme weather, and shifts in up of various gases, acted like a Fueling a warming world the ranges of animals and glass box, containing the air By 1904, Arrhenius had become plants, leading to disease, and keeping it warm. Fourier\u2019s concerned about the dramatic extinction, and food shortages. hypothesis, although oversimplistic, increase of CO2 due to human led to the \u201cgreenhouse effect\u201d actions\u2014primarily through burning The extent to which global theory of Earth\u2019s thermal regulation. fossil fuels, such as coal and oil. He temperatures will increase correctly predicted the influence depends on whether (and John Tyndall was the first to that CO2 emissions would have on how rapidly) global CO2 prove Fourier\u2019s greenhouse effect global temperatures, but eventually emissions diminish. Scientists hypothesis. His experiments came to the conclusion that an predict that, at the current demonstrated how, when Earth increase in global temperatures rate, this increase could cools down at night\u2014by releasing could have a beneficial effect on range from 0.5\u00b0F to 8\u00b0F the heat absorbed from the Sun plant growth and food production. (0.3\u00b0\u20134.6\u00b0C) by 2100, with during the day\u2014atmospheric the greatest warming likely gases, especially water vapor, The burning of fossil fuels has, to occur in the Arctic regions. absorb the heat (radiation) and in fact, increased CO2 levels more cause a greenhouse effect. This quickly than Arrhenius expected, The Perito Moreno glacier in keeps Earth\u2019s temperature at an although the planet has warmed Patagonia is one of the few glaciers less than he predicted. Scientists that is still growing. The majority If the planet were a patient, understand now that global are slowly melting, causing sea we would have treated warming is having damaging levels to rise worldwide. her long ago. effects on people and on the Prince Charles environment, and will continue to do so as long as long as emissions continue to increase. \u25a0","\u0420\u0415\u041b\u0418\u0417 \u041f\u041e\u0414\u0413\u041e\u0422\u041e\u0412\u0418\u041b\u0410 \u0413\u0420\u0423\u041f\u041f\u0410 \\\"What's News\\\" VK.COM\/WSNWS 204 LGTIHEVOEINLMGOOGMSICATATPLTOEFWROERISRCFEUL THE BIOSPHERE IN CONTEXT E arth has four interacting and water-based environment, and subsystems: the lithosphere, reaches into extreme habitats, such KEY FIGURE Earth\u2019s rigid, rocky outer as the intensely hot mineral-rich Vladimir Vernadsky shell; the hydrosphere, which waters around hydrothermal vents. (1863\u20131945) comprises all water on the planet\u2019s It is often divided into \u201cbiomes\u201d\u2014 surface; the atmosphere, formed by common major habitats, such as BEFORE layers of surrounding gases; and deserts, grasslands, oceans, tundra, 1785 Scottish geologist James the biosphere\u2014anywhere that and tropical rain forests. Hutton proposes that in order supports life, from the ocean depths to understand Earth, all of its to the highest mountaintops. Earth the superorganism interactions should be studied. Ideas about the biosphere began The biosphere\u2019s origins are to emerge in the 18th century, 1875 Austrian geologist ancient: fossils of tiny single-celled when the Scottish geologist James Eduard Suess first uses the microorganisms that date back Hutton described Earth as a term \u201cbiosphere\u201d to describe 4.28 billion years suggest that it superorganism\u2014a single living \u201cthe place on Earth\u2019s surface is almost as old as Earth itself. The entity. A century later, Eduard where life dwells.\u201d biosphere extends into every land- Suess introduced the concept of the biosphere in Das Antlitz der Erde AFTER Man is becoming a (The Face of the Earth). Suess 1928 In Methodology of more and more powerful explained that life is limited to a Systematics, Russian zoologist geological force, and the zone at Earth\u2019s surface and that Vladimir Beklemishe warns change of his position on plants are a good example of the that humanity\u2019s future is interactions between the biosphere irrevocably linked to the the planet coincided and other zones\u2014they grow in the preservation of the biosphere. with this process. soil of the lithosphere, but their leaves breathe in the atmosphere. 1974 British scientist James Vladimir Vernadsky Lovelock and American In The Biosphere (1926), Russian biologist Lynn Margulis geochemist Vladimir Vernadsky, first publish their Gaia who had met Suess in 1911, defined hypothesis\u2014the idea of the concept in much more detail, Earth as a living entity. outlining his view of life as a major geological force. Vernadsky was one of the first to recognize that atmospheric oxygen, nitrogen,","\u0420\u0415\u041b\u0418\u0417 \u041f\u041e\u0414\u0413\u041e\u0422\u041e\u0412\u0418\u041b\u0410 \u0413\u0420\u0423\u041f\u041f\u0410 \\\"What's News\\\" VK.COM\/WSNWS THE LIVING EARTH 205 See also: The ecosystem 134\u2013137 \u25a0 Biodiversity and ecosystem function 156\u2013157 \u25a0 A holistic view of Earth 210\u2013211 \u25a0 The Gaia hypothesis 214\u2013217 Over billions of years layers of oxygen increased, more complex Vladimir Vernadsky cyanobacteria have fossilized to form life forms evolved that would shape stromatolites\u2014mounds of sedimentary Earth in different ways, eroding Born in 1863, Vladimir rock, as seen here at Hamelin Pool, and remolding its surface, and Vernadsky graduated from Shark Bay, Western Australia. changing its chemical composition. St. Petersburg State University aged 22, and did postgraduate and carbon dioxide result from Gradually, elements of the work in Italy and Germany, biological processes, such as the biosphere became part of the where he studied the optical, respiration of plants and animals. lithosphere. Over millennia, dead elastic, magnetic, thermal, He argued that living organisms corals created reefs in shallow and electrical properties of reshape the planet as surely as tropical oceans. Similarly, the calcite crystals. After the revolution physical forces, such as waves, skeletons of trillions of marine in Russia in February 1917, wind, and rain. He also introduced organisms fell to the ocean floor, Vernadsky became assistant the idea of three stages of Earth\u2019s fossilized, and formed limestone. \u25a0 Minister of Education in the development: first, the birth of the provisional government. The planet with the geosphere, in which I look forward with following year, he founded the only inanimate matter existed; great optimism. Ukrainian Academy of Science secondly, the emergence of life in in Kiev. Although his book the biosphere; and finally the epoch We live in a transition The Biosphere was not taken in which human activity changed to the noosphere. seriously by scientists outside the planet forever\u2014the noosphere. Russia for many years, it later Vladimir Vernadsky became one of the founding Sphere interactions documents of Gaia theory. Scientists believe the biosphere has constantly changed. Oxygen In the 1930s, Vernadsky levels in the atmosphere began advocated the use of nuclear to rise at least 2.7 billion years power, and played an advisory ago, as microorganisms called role in the development of the cyanobacteria multiplied. As Soviet atomic bomb project. He died in 1945. Key works 1924 Geochemistry 1926 The Biosphere 1943 \u201cThe Biosphere and the Noosphere\u201d 1944 \u201cProblems of Biochemistry\u201d","\u0420\u0415\u041b\u0418\u0417 \u041f\u041e\u0414\u0413\u041e\u0422\u041e\u0412\u0418\u041b\u0410 \u0413\u0420\u0423\u041f\u041f\u0410 \\\"What's News\\\" VK.COM\/WSNWS 206 OTHFENSATYUSRTEEM IN CONTEXT BIOMES KEY FIGURES Frederic Clements (1874\u20131945), Victor Shelford (1877\u20131968) BEFORE 1793 Alexander von Humboldt coins the word \u201cassociation\u201d to sum up the mix of plant types that occurs in a particular habitat. 1866 Ernst Haeckel poses the idea of the biotope, the living space for a range of plants and animals. AFTER 1966 Leslie Holdridge champions the idea of life zones based on the biological effects of temperature and rainfall variations. 1973 German\u2013Russian botanist Heinrich Walter creates a biome system that considers seasonal variations. D ifferent parts of the world have varying patterns of plant and animal life, but there are usually similarities over vast areas. These are called biomes, and each one is a large geographical region with its own distinctive plant and animal community and ecosystem. The idea of the biome was first popularized by plant ecologist Frederic Clements and zoologist Victor Shelford in the US, in their key book Bioecology (1939), although its origins date back earlier. The biome concept took shape as ideas on plant succession and community ecology developed. Clements identified \u201cformations,\u201d large plant communities, which led","\u0420\u0415\u041b\u0418\u0417 \u041f\u041e\u0414\u0413\u041e\u0422\u041e\u0412\u0418\u041b\u0410 \u0413\u0420\u0423\u041f\u041f\u0410 \\\"What's News\\\" VK.COM\/WSNWS THE LIVING EARTH 207 See also: The distribution of species over space and time 162\u2013163 \u25a0 Climax community 172\u2013173 \u25a0 Open community theory 174\u2013175 \u25a0 Biogeography 200\u2013201 to his idea of climax communities in The geographic spread Threatened coral 1916. The same year, Clements used of plants is determined reef biomes the term \u201cbiome\u201d to describe biotic communities\u2014all the interacting mainly by climate. Coral reefs are such bountiful organisms within a specific habitat. Different plants flourish habitats that they are often in each climatic region. seen as the tropical rain Like-minded thinkers The major types of plants forests of the sea. They Clements was not the only one support a quarter of all marine thinking along these lines. Zoologist in each region match species and provide livelihoods Victor Shelford was working toward precipitation for half a billion people. Yet the same idea. The pair began to they now face catastrophe. meet over the next 20 years, while and temperature Half of all reefs have been lost pursuing their own research, to see patterns closely. in the last 30 years, and some how they could combine the worlds experts estimate that 90 of plants and animals. Clements The major plant percent will be gone over the studied plant biomes in Colorado types can be used next 30 years. The main global with his wife, the eminent botanist to divide the world threats are ocean acidification Edith Clements. Meanwhile, Shelford into broad natural and global warming. As seas compiled the Naturalist\u2019s Guide to warm, stressed corals expel the Americas (1926)\u2014the first major zones called the algae they rely on for food. geographical summary of wildlife in biomes, which They stop growing, lose their the Americas, in which he talked reflect variations colour, and often die in what is about \u201cbiota.\u201d This book laid much called a coral bleaching event. of the foundation for later findings. in climate. Such events are becoming ever more frequent. There are Ways of looking at interactions local threats, too, including in ecological communities took a overfishing, both for the table major step forward when British \u276f\u276f and for aquariums. Even more seriously, to catch fish for The Mongolian steppe belongs to the aquariums, sodium cyanide is same grassland biome as the prairies often squirted into the water in North America. Despite being on to temporarily immobilize the separate continents, they are linked fish, and this kills corals. More by their climate, animals, and plants. brutally, fish for the table are often caught by throwing dynamite into the water. This kills fish, making them easy to scoop up in vast numbers, but it also blasts coral reefs apart.","\u0420\u0415\u041b\u0418\u0417 \u041f\u041e\u0414\u0413\u041e\u0422\u041e\u0412\u0418\u041b\u0410 \u0413\u0420\u0423\u041f\u041f\u0410 \\\"What's News\\\" VK.COM\/WSNWS 208 BIOMES botanist Arthur Tansley introduced example, in every continent, but rainforest, grasslands, and deserts, the term \u201cecosystem\u201d in 1935. most tree species appear only in but there is no agreed definition When Clements and Shelford one continent. So, the range of trees and there are marked variations. published the results of their within the Amazonian forests is collaboration in 1939, they were not completely different from the range The climate factor making a sudden breakthrough\u2014 of trees in the forests of Indonesia. The one common factor in all biome rather it was a consolidation of Yet both areas are identifiable as classifications has been climate, ideas that had been taking shape tropical forest, because the trees although other \u201cabiotic\u201d factors can over a long time. have features in common. also play a part. Climate determines the form of plant growth best suited The collaboration between Since Bioecology first appeared, to a region, and plants that grow botany and zoology was crucial. there have been countless attempts in a certain way are restricted Only by looking at the totality of to define what a biome is, and many to particular climates. The leaves the natural world with its dynamic different ways of classifying them. of deciduous trees are broad, with interactions could scientists hope Biomes provide a simple way a large surface for light absorption, to get a full picture, and Clements of understanding global vegetation but little resistance to drying out defined a biome as \u201can organic unit patterns, but when looked at closely or frost. Conifer tree needles, on the comprising all the species of plants they present a crude way of grouping other hand, are narrow and can and animals at home in a particular ecosystems. There is no single survive the harshest frosts. Desert habitat.\u201d Even so, biomes have accepted classification system, and shrubs often have very thin leaves, come to be defined principally the only division everyone seems to or no leaves at all, to resist drying by vegetation type. agree on is that between terrestrial out. Biogeographers acknowledge (land-based) and aquatic (water- climate\u2019s key role when they talk The most important feature of based) biomes. Many of the same about \u201ctropical\u201d rainforests and biomes is that they link vegetation biomes crop up in most systems, \u201ctemperate\u201d grasslands. and plant communities across the such as the polar biome, tundra, world. There are tropical forests, for Terrestrial biomes of the world Tropical forest This map shows six biomes across the globe. Each area Temperate forest has distinct flora, as major plant types vary from one climatic Mountains region to another. Ocean and freshwater biomes are not displayed here, but are equally important to the biosphere. Grasslands Desert Polar regions","\u0420\u0415\u041b\u0418\u0417 \u041f\u041e\u0414\u0413\u041e\u0422\u041e\u0412\u0418\u041b\u0410 \u0413\u0420\u0423\u041f\u041f\u0410 \\\"What's News\\\" VK.COM\/WSNWS THE LIVING EARTH 209 Ecozones Tropical rainforest is the hottest and of the pyramid represent three Biomes are about identifying wettest biome and covers 7 per cent axes: rain, temperature, and the similar forms that life of Earth\u2019s surface. One of the oldest evapotranspiration (which depends takes in response to particular biomes, it also contains far more animal on both rain and temperature). Using regional conditions such as and plant species than any other biome. these axes, he could plot hexagons climate, soil, and topography. showing regions that also reflect However, there are other Very few species have identical humidity, latitude, and altitude. methods of dividing the world climate requirements. Even among in ecological terms. In 1973, varieties of the same plants, there American plant ecologist Robert Hungarian biologist Miklos are variations. The sugar maple Whittaker devised a much simpler Udvardy came up with the of eastern North America, for graph, with average temperature concept of biogeographic example, is slightly more tolerant on one axis and annual rainfall on realms; this system was then of winter cold than its cousin the the other. With these two variables further developed in a scheme silver maple. Although the areas plotted against each other, he was by the World Wildlife Fund. where both trees grow overlap, the able to divide the graph into nine The BBC later replaced the sugar maple can be seen far over the biomes\u2014from tropical rain forest term \u201cbiogeographic realm\u201d Canadian border, whereas the silver (the hottest and wettest) through with \u201cecozone.\u201d Biogeographic maple flourishes as far south as to tundra (the coldest and driest). realms divide the whole planet Texas. Since biomes give only an according to the evolutionary approximate picture of plant and Underpinning all these systems history of plants and animals. animal distribution, ecologists are is the idea of convergent evolution, The ways in which continents constantly devising new systems which argues that species develop have split apart and drifted of classification. similar traits as they adapt to similar means that species have environments. Insects, birds, bats, evolved variously in different Rain, heat, and evolution and pterosaurs all developed wings parts of the world. Ecozones One of the most widely recognized independently to occupy air space. are therefore based on systems of classification is the life Different biomes are therefore identifying this diversification. zones system devised by American assumed to develop corresponding Australasia, for example, is botanist Leslie Holdridge in 1947, life forms in response to similar a single ecozone, because and updated in 1967. His system is environmental conditions. However, marsupials evolved there in based on the assumption that two in recent decades, it has been noted isolation from other mammals key factors, rain and heat, determine that species can evolve differently in the rest of the world. vegetation type in each region. He in the same biome and also that created a graphic depiction of 38 life different stable biomes can develop The short-beaked echidna zones in a pyramid. The three sides in an identical climate. While central is one of the most widespread to understanding life, biomes remain native mammals in the Australasian a complex and elusive concept. \u25a0 ecozone. They live in a range of habitats from desert to rain forest.","\u0420\u0415\u041b\u0418\u0417 \u041f\u041e\u0414\u0413\u041e\u0422\u041e\u0412\u0418\u041b\u0410 \u0413\u0420\u0423\u041f\u041f\u0410 \\\"What's News\\\" VK.COM\/WSNWS 210 FBSWOEEECRRATVTAUIHCKSEEEEMSNWFAOETRUDROGENR\u2019\u2019ASTNPTAEYD A HOLISTIC VIEW OF EARTH IN CONTEXT T he American ecologist Salt marshes, such as these on the Eugene Odum was not coast near Porthmadog, North Wales, KEY FIGURE the first scientist to write form their own ecosystem, with the Eugene Odum (1913\u20132002) about ecology, but in the 1950s he seawater and its nutrients providing proposed that it deserved to be a a unique habitat for wildlife. BEFORE discipline in its own right. Until 1905 In Research Methods in then, ecology was viewed as a could never lead to a full knowledge Ecology, American botanist relatively insignificant subdivision of the living world. He argued that Frederic Clements writes of the biological sciences\u2014the poor it was more important to study the about plant communities and relation of biology, zoology, and places and roles that the species how they change over time. botany. However, Odum believed held in their community, rather passionately that studying plant than simply finding out more 1935 Arthur Tansley, a British and animal species in isolation about what they were. Odum\u2019s botanist, proposes the term \u201cecosystem\u201d to describe a community of plants, animals, soil minerals, water, and air. AFTER 1954 Eugene and Howard Odum\u2019s study of the coral Eniwetok Atoll in the Pacific Ocean applies the principles of holistic ecology. 1974 British environmentalist James Lovelock and American biologist Lynn Margulis first publish their Gaia hypothesis. It states that Earth is a self- regulating system that maintains the conditions necessary for life on our planet.","\u0420\u0415\u041b\u0418\u0417 \u041f\u041e\u0414\u0413\u041e\u0422\u041e\u0412\u0418\u041b\u0410 \u0413\u0420\u0423\u041f\u041f\u0410 \\\"What's News\\\" VK.COM\/WSNWS THE LIVING EARTH 211 See also: The ecosystem 134\u2013137 \u25a0 Macroecology 185 \u25a0 The peaceful Earth Day coexistence of humankind and nature 297 \u25a0 The Green Movement 308\u2013309 After witnessing a horrific new approach to the subject\u2014 \u2026ecology has been oil spill in Santa Barbara, first set out in his 1953 book badly presented and California, in 1969, US Senator The Fundamentals of Ecology\u2014 has been broken into Gaylord Nelson decided to revolutionized the purpose and too many antagonistic focus on growing worries influence of ecological research. about pollution during a subdivisions. national \u201cteach-in\u201d on the The \u201cnew ecology\u201d Eugene Odum environment. He could not The holistic view of Earth involves have envisaged the size of the studying the systems of organisms the whole animal, or the ecosystem movement he would inspire. as a whole. As Odum explained, in which the animal lives\u2014are able On April 22, 1970, 20 million one organism, or any one group of to self-regulate to provide stability. Americans took part in the organisms, cannot be understood first Earth Day, with rallies, without studying the ecosystem in Integrated investigation marches, and lectures taking which it lives. The holistic approach A holistic study of a lake ecosystem place nationwide. Such was examines all the roles played by would involve looking at all the the effect of the protests that each member of an ecosystem, inputs into the lake and its margins later that year the Clean Air, and how that system interacts with as well as all the outputs, including Clean Water, and Endangered others. Climate, geology, water and energy, water, minerals, and Species Acts became law, and mineral input, and human activity nutrients. It would also consider the Environmental Protection all affect\u2014and are affected by\u2014a any human inputs. The study Agency was established in the multitude of living communities. would examine the roles played US that December. Earth Day by both producer organisms, such became a global phenomenon, Odum was writing in the 1950s as plants and algae, and consumers with 200 million people and \u201960s, when there was a growing such as herbivores and carnivores. participating in 141 countries awareness of the environmental The holistic approach also examines in 1990\u2014and built momentum destruction wrought by humanity. changes over time, in which for the 1992 UN Earth Summit The role of people was a crucial part developments that benefit some in Rio de Janeiro. Earth Day of \u201csystems ecology,\u201d as he called organisms in the short-term might celebrations are held every his idea. Odum wanted humans to lead to a lack of diversity in the April, with a different theme be sympathetic allies with the future. For example, although trout each time. In 2018, the focus natural world\u2014collaborators rather thrive in warmish, alkaline waters, was on ending global pollution than manipulators\u2014and his views if those waters become too warm by plastics. of an all-embracing ecology did or acidic due to ecological change, much to inspire the first Earth Day, the fish can no longer breed. The first Earth Day on April 22, which was celebrated in 1970. 1970, saw crowds such as this Odum\u2019s holistic approach leaves one in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, The holistic concept of Odum\u2019s a legacy of a far more detailed gather across the US to protest \u201cnew ecology\u201d deals with Earth appreciation of what is happening against pollution and the use as a whole, bringing together in an ecosystem than a series of of pesticides. physics, chemistry, botany, zoology, individual species studies. \u25a0 geology, and meteorology. The fundamental assumptions of ecology are that the ecosystem is the basic unit of nature, that biological diversity increases the ability of ecosystems to survive, and that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Systems in the natural world\u2014whether they are groups of cells in an animal\u2019s body,","\u0420\u0415\u041b\u0418\u0417 \u041f\u041e\u0414\u0413\u041e\u0422\u041e\u0412\u0418\u041b\u0410 \u0413\u0420\u0423\u041f\u041f\u0410 \\\"What's News\\\" VK.COM\/WSNWS 212 IPASLNANDTODETETASELTCLRTUHOCANVTICOIOSCN MOVING CONTINENTS AND EVOLUTION IN CONTEXT T he surface of Earth is This fossilized head of the extinct constantly moving, very reptile Cynognathus crateronotus was KEY FIGURE slowly, and has been doing found in southern Africa. The same Alfred Wegener (1880\u20131930) so for more than three billion years. fossils occur in South America: evidence The lithosphere (Earth\u2019s crust and that the two continents were once one. BEFORE upper mantle) is divided into seven 1596 Abraham Ortelius, a large sections and many smaller animals or plants concerned would Dutch scholar, is one of several ones, called tectonic plates. Where have been unable to cross the ocean geographers who observe that plates meet, the type of movement divide. These include Cynognathus the two sides of the Atlantic determines the nature of the crateronotus, a mammal-like reptile Ocean seem to \u201cfit\u201d each other. boundary. Where plates push that lived over 200 million years ago against each other, new mountains in southern Africa and eastern South AFTER are created. If plates pull apart, new America. Glossopteris, a genus of 1929 British geologist crust forms on the ocean floor. woody trees, grew in South America, Arthur Holmes proposes South Africa, Australia, India, and that convection in Earth\u2019s The first inkling that the Antarctica, but nowhere else, around mantle drives continental drift. continents may not have always 300 million years ago. been in their current positions came 1943 George Gaylord Simpson in the late 16th century. European To German geophysicist Alfred dismisses fossil evidence for explorers sailing to the Americas Wegener, such fossil patterns continental drift and argues saw from their newly created maps indicated that these continents had for \u201cstable continents.\u201d that the coastlines on each side once been joined together. In 1915, of the Atlantic Ocean mirrored he published his theory that all the 1962 American geologist each other. Later, geologists found continents were once a single land Harry Hess explains how the strong structural and geological mass, \u201cPangaea,\u201d which has since seafloor spreads, by molten similarities between the Caledonian- broken up and drifted apart. magma rising from below. era mountains of Northern Europe and the Appalachian Mountains of 2015 A group of Australian North America. scientists propose that periods of rapid evolution in the oceans Lookalike fossils were triggered by collisions There are various examples of fossil between tectonic plates. finds straddling different continents that can only be explained by continental movement\u2014since the","\u0420\u0415\u041b\u0418\u0417 \u041f\u041e\u0414\u0413\u041e\u0422\u041e\u0412\u0418\u041b\u0410 \u0413\u0420\u0423\u041f\u041f\u0410 \\\"What's News\\\" VK.COM\/WSNWS THE LIVING EARTH 213 See also: Island biogeography 144\u2013149 \u25a0 The distribution of species over space and time 162\u2013163 \u25a0 Macroecology 185 \u25a0 Metapopulations 186\u2013187 \u25a0 Biogeography 200\u2013201 Three types of plate boundary Plates move apart Plates collide Plates slide alongside each other Tectonic plates can move in three Divergent Convergent Transform different ways, forming different types of boundary. When plates diverge, new oceanic crust is formed. When they converge, new mountains form. When plates slide past each other, the rift is known as a transform fault. Wegener\u2019s theory was not well plates is driven by convection The forces which received at first. In 1943, George currents carrying heat from deep displace continents Gaylord Simpson, one of the most inside the planet to the surface. influential paleontologists in the are the same US, criticized the theory. He argued Once Wegener\u2019s theory was as those which that the fossil record could be accepted, the fossil evidence made produce great explained by static continents linked much better sense. Continental drift fold-mountain ranges. and unlinked by periodic flooding. has had a profound influence on how Alfred Wegener species have evolved. For example, Evidence and evolution if a continent splits apart, the two Despite early doubts, evidence for separated populations of a species the plate tectonics theory grew. A can start to evolve in completely series of discoveries established that different directions. On the other the seafloor was spreading and that hand, if two continents collide, or a new oceanic crust was constantly bridge of land forms between them, being created. We now understand different species begin to mix and that the movement of the tectonic compete, and some may become extinct as a result. \u25a0 Marsupials in America and Australia Marsupials are strongly identified Marsupials are nonplacental thought that they traveled via a with Australia, yet they evolved in mammals whose young complete belt of vegetation straddling the America and are still also found there. their gestation feeding from their three areas, which were once all mother\u2019s teats, typically in a part of the southern landmass pouch on the belly. Now found called Gondwana. only in the Americas (mainly South and Central) and Australia, By 55 million years ago, they are thought to have evolved the continents had separated, in North America 100 million and marsupial species began years ago. They spread to South to evolve differently. The only America and diversified into many known Antarctic marsupial different species. fossils, found on Seymour Island in 40-million-year-old rocks, Several groups later moved resemble South American into what is now Antarctica and marsupials of the same period, on into southern Australia. It is but not those of Australia.","\u0420\u0415\u041b\u0418\u0417 \u041f\u041e\u0414\u0413\u041e\u0422\u041e\u0412\u0418\u041b\u0410 \u0413\u0420\u0423\u041f\u041f\u0410 \\\"What's News\\\" VK.COM\/WSNWS 214 LEOIAWFRENTCHPHUTARONPGIOTESSSES IN CONTEXT THE GAIA HYPOTHESIS KEY FIGURE James Lovelock (1919\u2013) BEFORE 1935 British botanist Arthur Tansley uses \u201cecosystem\u201d to describe an interdependent community of biological and nonbiological components. 1953 In Fundamentals of Ecology, American ecologist Eugene Odum describes Earth as a collection of interlocking ecosystems. AFTER 1985 In the US, the first conference on the Gaia hypothesis is held, entitled, \u201cIs the Earth a Living Organism?\u201d 2004 James Lovelock voices his support for nuclear power over renewable energy. I n 1979, British scientist James Lovelock\u2019s book Gaia: A New Look at Life on Earth presented his Gaia hypothesis to a general readership. In essence, Lovelock claimed that Earth is a single, self- regulating system, in which living and nonliving elements combine to promote life. The book quickly became a bestseller, and caught the imagination of the growing Green movement, offering a fresh approach to environmentalism. What Lovelock proposed was not without precedent. In the 1920s, Vladimir Vernadsky, a Russian scientist, had developed the idea of the biosphere, the zone of Earth that holds all living organisms, and suggested that it could be seen as a single entity in which organic and","\u0420\u0415\u041b\u0418\u0417 \u041f\u041e\u0414\u0413\u041e\u0422\u041e\u0412\u0418\u041b\u0410 \u0413\u0420\u0423\u041f\u041f\u0410 \\\"What's News\\\" VK.COM\/WSNWS THE LIVING EARTH 215 See also: The ecosystem 134\u2013137 \u25a0 Evolutionarily stable state 154\u2013155 \u25a0 The biosphere 204\u2013205 \u25a0 A holistic view of Earth 210\u2013211 Evolution is a tightly coupled pedosphere, the surface layer of the James Lovelock dance, with life and the Earth; the hydrosphere, the bodies of material environment as water on the Earth\u2019s surface; and the Inspired by writers such as partners. From the dance atmosphere, the gases surrounding Jules Verne and H.G. Wells, emerges the entity Gaia. the Earth. These spheres and their James Lovelock, born in 1919, James Lovelock complex interactions maintain was fascinated by science and Earth in \u201chomeostasis.\u201d This invention from an early age. inorganic elements interact. The concept is borrowed from physiology, He graduated in chemistry British botanist Arthur Tansley which describes the stable internal from Manchester University then took this idea further in the conditions, such as temperature in 1941. Lovelock was a 1930s, with his concept of an and chemical composition, that conscientious objector during \u201cecosystem\u201d that regulates itself allow organisms to function World War II and worked for into a state of equilibrium. optimally. They are controlled by the National Institute for self-regulating mechanisms Medical Research in London. Tansley\u2019s theory was at the that react to change in those In 1948, he received his Ph.D. heart of Lovelock\u2019s hypothesis: conditions. Lovelock\u2019s use of the in medicine, and then spent that all living organisms and their word homeostasis reinforced time in the US on a Rockefeller environment form one complex the implication that Earth, fellowship. After returning super-ecosystem that regulates and or Gaia, is a living entity. to Britain in 1955, he turned balances conditions to sustain life his attention to inventions, on Earth. The idea first occurred to Keeping the balance notably the electron-capture Lovelock in the late 1960s, but it The hint of mysticism in the Gaia detector (ECD), which detects was after discussing it with US principle chimed with the \u201cNew trace atoms in a gas sample. microbiologist Lynn Margulis that Age\u201d thinking of the time. This In the 1960s and 1970s, he it began to take shape. Together, helped popularize the idea, but held visiting professorships in they presented the hypothesis in a it also led to a negative reception Houston, Texas, and Reading, paper in 1974, giving it a name from the scientific establishment. England, during which time suggested by the writer William However, behind the Earth he developed the Gaia Golding\u2014Gaia, after the ancient \u201cgoddess\u201d metaphor was a serious hypothesis. In 2003, Lovelock Greek Earth goddess. Lovelock and science-based hypothesis that \u276f\u276f was made a Companion of Margulis portrayed Earth as a Honour by Queen Elizabeth II. living entity, composed of the biosphere, living organisms; the Key works A stone relief shows Gaia, the 1988 The Ages of Gaia Greek goddess of Earth. The 1991 Gaia: The Practical nonscientific name chosen by Lovelock Science of Planetary Medicine for his hypothesis initially hindered 2009 The Vanishing Face of its acceptance by many scientists. Gaia: A Final Warning","\u0420\u0415\u041b\u0418\u0417 \u041f\u041e\u0414\u0413\u041e\u0422\u041e\u0412\u0418\u041b\u0410 \u0413\u0420\u0423\u041f\u041f\u0410 \\\"What's News\\\" VK.COM\/WSNWS 216 THE GAIA HYPOTHESIS Daisyworld At first, scientists criticized In the Gaia hypothesis, Earth, the different state of equilibrium. Such the Gaia hypothesis for its only known planet to support life, is a tipping point, argued Lovelock, supposed implication that the itself a \u201csuperorganism,\u201d where the sea, occurred about 2.5 billion years ecosystems in the biosphere land, and atmosphere work together to ago, at the end of the Archean Eon, could collectively influence maintain the right living conditions. when oxygen first appeared on Earth\u2019s environment. So to Earth. At this time, Earth was a enhance the plausibility of the salinity in its environment. When hot, acidic place in which methane- Gaia theory, in 1983 James these are constant, Earth is in producing bacteria were the only Lovelock and fellow British a stable state of homeostasis, but life that thrived. Bacteria capable of scientist Andrew Watson if the balance is disturbed, the photosynthesis then evolved, which produced \u201cDaisyworld,\u201d a planet encourages the organisms created an atmosphere that was simple explanatory model. that will restore the equilibrium, while being hostile to those that If there were Daisyworld is a barren reinforce the disturbance. The a nuclear war, planet, orbiting a sun. As the organic components of the Earth and humanity were intensity of the sun\u2019s rays system do not simply react to wiped out, Earth increases, black daisies start changes in their environment, but would breathe to grow. They absorb heat and control and regulate them. a sigh of relief. warm the planet\u2019s surface to James Lovelock the point where white daisies These feedback mechanisms can thrive. They, in turn, operate in a complex global network reflect the sun\u2019s energy, so of interconnected natural cycles, to cooling the ground. The two maintain the optimum conditions kinds of daisy reach a point for the organisms within them. of equilibrium, whereby they They can resist change, but only regulate the temperature of to a certain extent. A big enough the planet. When the sun\u2019s disturbance can push the system heat increases further, the to a \u201ctipping point,\u201d where, with the white daisies, able to reflect balance of its components altered, the sunlight and stay cool, it is likely to settle into a very replace the black daisies. Finally, the sun heats up so much that even the white daisies can no longer survive. the interactions of living organisms and their physical surroundings\u2014 including the cycles of oxygen, carbon, nitrogen, and sulfur\u2014 form a dynamic system that stabilizes the environment. According to Lovelock, Gaia is controlled by the action of \u201cfeedback loops,\u201d which are the checks and balances that compensate for disturbances in the system, bringing it back into equilibrium. To function well, life on Earth depends on a particular balance of variables such as water, temperature, oxygen, acidity, and","\u0420\u0415\u041b\u0418\u0417 \u041f\u041e\u0414\u0413\u041e\u0422\u041e\u0412\u0418\u041b\u0410 \u0413\u0420\u0423\u041f\u041f\u0410 \\\"What's News\\\" VK.COM\/WSNWS THE LIVING EARTH 217 conducive to more complex forms An algal feedback loop of life. Eventually, the equilibrium conditions that exist on Earth Lots of clouds mean More DMS today were established. heat from the Sun means is reflected back Saving the planet into space. more cloud. As Lovelock elaborated on the theme, the scientific establishment Cooler temperatures Warmer temperatures gradually began to accept the Gaia mean lower algal mean higher algal growth hypothesis. In the 1980s, a series growth and of \u201cGaia conferences\u201d attracted less DMS gas. and more DMS. scientists from many different disciplines, willing to explore the Less DMS Fewer clouds mean mechanisms involved in regulating means more heat from the Sun Earth\u2019s environment to achieve homeostasis. Later, more attention fewer clouds. reaches Earth. was devoted to looking at the implications of the hypothesis In Gaia theory, feedback loops keep Earth in in the face of climate change. balance. One example is the effect that sea algae called Human activity had been shown coccolithophores have on keeping the planet\u2019s climate in to disturb Gaia\u2019s system, but the check. When the algae die, they release a gas, dimethyl issue was now whether its sulphide (DMS), that helps to create clouds. regulatory mechanisms could withstand further pressure\u2014or whether Earth was facing another irreversible tipping point. Environmentalists, who had been among the first to embrace Gaia, reacted with dismay to the theory that the human species may precipitate a catastrophic change in Earth\u2019s equilibrium. The rallying cry of Green activists became \u201cSave the planet!\u201d but this was at odds with the fundamental idea of Gaia. Although the destruction of natural habitats, the excessive burning of fossil fuels, the depletion of biodiversity, and other human- made threats were likely to have severe consequences for many species\u2014including humans\u2014 the planet, according to the Gaia hypothesis, will survive and find a new equilibrium. \u25a0 Nuclear power stations produce plentiful \u201cclean\u201d energy, but also toxic waste. James Lovelock believes Earth is able to absorb and overcome the waste\u2019s radioactive effects.","\u0420\u0415\u041b\u0418\u0417 \u041f\u041e\u0414\u0413\u041e\u0422\u041e\u0412\u0418\u041b\u0410 \u0413\u0420\u0423\u041f\u041f\u0410 \\\"What's News\\\" VK.COM\/WSNWS 65 MILLION KYEIALRSLAEGODSOHMEATHLINFG OTFHALEL TEHEALRIFTE OHN MASS EXTINCTIONS","\u0420\u0415\u041b\u0418\u0417 \u041f\u041e\u0414\u0413\u041e\u0422\u041e\u0412\u0418\u041b\u0410 \u0413\u0420\u0423\u041f\u041f\u0410 \\\"What's News\\\" VK.COM\/WSNWS","\u0420\u0415\u041b\u0418\u0417 \u041f\u041e\u0414\u0413\u041e\u0422\u041e\u0412\u0418\u041b\u0410 \u0413\u0420\u0423\u041f\u041f\u0410 \\\"What's News\\\" VK.COM\/WSNWS 220 MASS EXTINCTIONS IN CONTEXT T here have been five periods The meteor that hit Earth at the end in Earth\u2019s history when of the Cretaceous period was traveling KEY FIGURE abnormally large numbers at 40,000 mph (64,000 kph). Its power Luis Alvarez (1911\u201388) of multicellular organisms have was a billion times greater than the died off in a relatively short time. Hiroshima atomic bomb. BEFORE These mass extinctions are defined 1953 American geologists by the loss of multicellular animals five families of marine animals every Allan O. Kelly and Frank and plants because their fossils are million years. This is far exceeded Dachille suggest in their book far easier to detect than those of during mass extinctions, which Target: Earth that a meteor single-celled organisms. always mark the boundary between impact may have been two geological periods. Scientists responsible for the extinction The general (\u201cbackground\u201d) rate do not understand all the factors of the dinosaurs. of extinction is between one and five responsible for these events, though species a year. Fossil records show, they are agreed on some. Increased AFTER for example, the extinction of two to 1991 The Chicxulub Crater in the north of the Yucatan Peninsula in southeastern Mexico is proposed as the site of a massive comet or meteor impact at the end of the Cretaceous period. 2010 An international panel of scientists agrees that the Chicxulub impact led to the Cretaceous\u2013Paleogene mass extinction, around 65 million years ago. Mass extinction events from 499 million years ago to the present Late Devonian Triassic HOLOCENE A rapid drop in sea level Climate change or (OR ANTHROPOCENE) PERIOD is one of a number of an asteroid hit are 100,000 YEARS AGO\u2013PRESENT possible causes for the potential causes for loss of 70\u201380 percent the extinction of round of animal species. 75 percent of species. ORDOVICIAN SILURIAN DEVONIAN CARBONIFEROUS PERMIAN TRIASSIC JURASSIC CRETACEOUS (K) PALAEOGENE NEOGENE 485\u2013444 444\u2013419 419\u2013359 359\u2013299 299\u2013252 252\u2013201 201\u2013145 145\u201366 66\u201323 23\u201303 Ordovician Permian Cretaceous Global cooling Huge volcanic A meteor strike and leads to the activity helps to volcanic activity drive extinction of wipe out 96 percent up to 80 percent of 85 percent of of all marine species. animals, including marine life. most dinosaurs, to extinction.","\u0420\u0415\u041b\u0418\u0417 \u041f\u041e\u0414\u0413\u041e\u0422\u041e\u0412\u0418\u041b\u0410 \u0413\u0420\u0423\u041f\u041f\u0410 \\\"What's News\\\" VK.COM\/WSNWS THE LIVING EARTH 221 See also: Ancient ice ages 198\u2013199 \u25a0 Moving continents and evolution 212\u2013213 \u25a0 The Gaia hypothesis 214\u2013217 \u25a0 Ocean acidification 281 All geologic history is full on Earth but common in asteroids. Luis Alvarez of the beginnings and the The discovery led to the Alvarez ends of species\u2013of their Hypothesis, which proposed that Considered one of the greatest the extinction at the end of the physicists of the 20th century, first and last days. Cretaceous period was caused Luis Alvarez was born in Hugh Miller by a catastrophic meteor strike. San Francisco in 1911. He The location of the impact was still graduated from the University Scottish geologist a mystery, until 11 years later, when of Chicago in 1936 and went a massive crater 106 miles (170 km) on to work at the Radiation volcanic activity, changes in the across on Mexico\u2019s Yucatan Laboratory in the University composition of the atmosphere and Peninsula was found to date from of California, Berkeley. There oceans, climate change, sea level the time of the extinction. he helped develop nuclear rises and falls, tectonic movement of reactors and, during World the continents, and meteor impacts The scientific consensus is that War II, nuclear weapons. He are all likely causes. Some scientists a massive comet or asteroid struck witnessed the atomic bombing suggest we have now entered a Earth, producing a blast of radiation of Hiroshima and helped build sixth mass extinction, this time the and a destructive megatsunami a plutonium bomb. result of human activity. more than 328 ft (100 m) high. The radiation would have killed animals After the war, Alvarez End of the dinosaurs nearby, and the megatsunami developed the liquid hydrogen The mass extinction that scientists would have obliterated coastal bubble chamber, used to understand best is also the most regions around the Gulf of Mexico. discover new subatomic recent, around 65 million years ago. The main damage, however, would particles. For this, in 1968 he Geologists refer to it as the K-Pg be more gradual. A vast cloud of was awarded the Nobel Prize extinction event because it occurred soot and dust would have spread for Physics. Later he provided at the end of the Cretaceous and through the atmosphere, blocking the calculations to back up the start of the Palaeogene periods. out sunlight for several years. Plants Alvarez Hypothesis of mass Although an extraterrestrial origin died because they could no longer extinction caused by a meteor was first suggested for the event in photosynthesize, and algae in coral strike. He died in 1988. the 1950s, this was not taken reefs also succumbed, disrupting seriously until two discoveries, in food chains worldwide. The \u276f\u276f Key works Europe and North America. We have very strong physical 1980 \u201cExtraterrestrial Cause In 1980 a team of scientists and chemical evidence for for the Cretaceous\u2013Tertiary working in Italy, including physicist a large impact \u2026 the Extinction,\u201d Science Luis Alvarez and his geologist son, extinction coincides with 1985 \u201cThe Hydrogen Bubble Walter Alvarez, discovered a clay the impact to a precision Chamber and the Strange layer between Cretaceous and of a centimetre or better. Resonances\u201d Paleogene deposits. Examination Walter Alvarez 1987 Alvarez: Adventures of the clay revealed that it contained of a Physicist the mineral iridium, which is rare","\u0420\u0415\u041b\u0418\u0417 \u041f\u041e\u0414\u0413\u041e\u0422\u041e\u0412\u0418\u041b\u0410 \u0413\u0420\u0423\u041f\u041f\u0410 \\\"What's News\\\" VK.COM\/WSNWS 222 MASS EXTINCTIONS Although many flying dinosaurs survived the K-Pg mass extinction at the end of the Cretaceous period, all pterosaurs perished, ending their 162-million-year stay on Earth. impact would have also released with a fast metabolism that dramatically, toward the end sulfuric acid into the atmosphere, demanded regular meals. Many of the Ordovician period, around which produced acid rain, plant species died because they 444 million years ago. At this time, acidifying the oceans and killing could not photosynthesize, leaving most organisms on Earth lived in off marine life. Around the same herbivorous dinosaurs with little the oceans. As the supercontinent time, a huge amount of volcanic vegetation to eat, while predatory Gondwana drifted slowly over the activity flooded 193,000 sq miles species starved for lack of prey. In South Pole, a giant ice cap formed, (500,000 sq km) of southern India contrast, fungi, which do not depend lowering global temperatures. with lava, forming the Deccan on photosynthesis, proliferated. Much of the planet\u2019s water became Plateau and further changing the \u201clocked up\u201d as ice, depressing sea climate and atmosphere. In the oceans, phytoplankton, a levels and reducing the area of vital food source that also relied on Earth\u2019s surface covered by ocean. The K-Pg event is best known photosynthesis, died out. Creatures for the extinction of all nonflying that fed on phytoplankton then As a result, marine organisms dinosaurs. It was also responsible faced extinction. These included living in shallow continental-shelf for the death of nearly all four- cephalopods, such as belemnites water suffered particularly high legged animals (tetrapods) that and ammonites, and the marine rates of extinction. In at least two weighed more than 55 lb (25 kg). reptiles known as the mosasaurs peak die-off periods, separated An exception were crocodiles, and the sauropterygians. by hundreds of thousands of years, which may have survived because nearly 85 percent of marine species they are ectotherms (cold-blooded Marine annihilation died out, including brachiopods, animals), able to survive for a long The earliest mass extinction, bryozoans, trilobites, graptolites, time without food. Dinosaurs were and the second-most catastrophic, and echinoderms. endotherms (warm-blooded animals), occurred when our planet cooled Slow extinction By the Late Devonian period, around 359 million years ago, the continents had been colonized by The current extinction has its own novel cause: not an asteroid or a massive volcanic eruption but \u201cone weedy species.\u201d Elizabeth Kolbert American journalist","\u0420\u0415\u041b\u0418\u0417 \u041f\u041e\u0414\u0413\u041e\u0422\u041e\u0412\u0418\u041b\u0410 \u0413\u0420\u0423\u041f\u041f\u0410 \\\"What's News\\\" VK.COM\/WSNWS THE LIVING EARTH 223 plants and insects, and massive Modelled future extinction Earth\u2019s history. The eruptions, organic reefs thrived in the oceans. rates are projected to which lasted nearly 1 million years, The continents of Euramerica and be 10,000 times Earth\u2019s flooded more than 0.8 million sq Gondwana were converging into historical geological miles (2 million sq km) of ancient what would become Pangaea\u2014 background rate. Siberia with basalt lava. The the last of the supercontinents. Ron Wagler resulting buildup of greenhouse In this period, a succession of gases would have transformed the extinctions\u2014possibly as many American academic atmosphere of Earth, likely resulting as seven\u2014took place over a longer in severe global warming and timescale than any other mass known as \u201cThe Great Dying,\u201d it contributing to species extinction. extinction event, possibly up resulted in the loss of 96 percent to 25 million years. of marine species and 70 percent of Phased losses land-living vertebrates. Insects All life today is descended from The extinctions may have had suffered the only mass extinction in the small minority of species many causes, including reduced their history, and the last of the that remained at the start of the oxygen in the oceans, falling sea trilobites, which had been in Triassic period. During the levels, atmospheric changes, the decline for millions of years, period\u2019s final 18 million years, draining of water produced by the disappeared from the fossil record. ending about 201 million years spread of plants, and asteroid ago, at least half of all animal impacts. Most organisms lived in Potential causes for the mass species known to be living at that the oceans, and shallow seas were extinction include asteroid impact time were wiped out in two or three worst affected, with many reef- and oxygen depletion in the extinction phases. Climate change building organisms, brachiopods, oceans. The extinction also caused by more basalt eruptions trilobites, and the last of the coincided with one of the biggest and an asteroid impact have been graptolite species dying off. Around periods of volcanic activity in cited as causes. In the seas, many 75 percent of marine species died, reptiles, cephalopods, mollusks, and it would be another 100 million and reef-building organisms died years before corals re-established out. On land, most of the reptilelike themselves on a large scale. archosaurs and many large amphibians became extinct. The \u201cThe Great Dying\u201d loss of the archosaurs, in particular, The most dramatic mass extinction opened up ecological niches that took place at the end of the Permian the dinosaurs would fill. \u25a0 period, 252 million years ago. Also The sixth extinction These losses have been driven by Sudan, the last male northern habitat change, climate change, white rhinocerous, died in 2018 (two Some ecologists have estimated overfishing, overhunting, ocean females remain). Poaching has taken the current rate of extinction of acidification, air pollution, and the species to the edge of extinction. animals and plants at 100\u20131,000 the introduction of animals that times the natural background disrupt food chains. American rate, with most of the increase ecologist E.O. Wilson, known due directly or indirectly to as \u201cthe father of biodiversity,\u201d human activities. They argue believes that if the species die-off that this is evidence the world continues at the present rate, half is already in the middle of the of all higher life forms will be Holocene extinction, named for extinct by 2100. Stuart Pimm, the present geological epoch. a British\u2013American biologist and Many species of animals and modern extinctions expert, is plants have been lost since more cautious, claiming that we the start of the Industrial are on the cusp of such an event Revolution in the 18th century. and can still act to stop it.","\u0420\u0415\u041b\u0418\u0417 \u041f\u041e\u0414\u0413\u041e\u0422\u041e\u0412\u0418\u041b\u0410 \u0413\u0420\u0423\u041f\u041f\u0410 \\\"What's News\\\" VK.COM\/WSNWS 224 IBRGNUERISTREIEENARNITNVHEGEOTSUAHSLWELEIRLFULUNEALWAY ENVIRONMENTAL FEEDBACK LOOPS IN CONTEXT Negative feedback loops A ll parts of an ecosystem regulate ecosystems. are interdependent. Any KEY FIGURE They damp species or habitat change James Hansen (1941\u2013) down change. will feed back into the system, and affect the whole of that system, BEFORE They keep populations including the part where it all 1875 In the book Climate and under control. started. In other words, the Change, Scottish scientist feedback travels around in a loop. James Croll describes the Negative climate-warming feedback feedback loops In some situations, change effect of melting ice. provide stability. is kept in check by the loop. For example, if aphids suddenly 1965 Canadian biologist multiply, they provide more food Charles Krebs discovers the for ladybugs, leading to an increase \u201cfence effect,\u201d showing vole in the number of ladybugs. But populations protected from with more ladybugs feeding on the foxes rocketing, then crashing. aphids, aphid numbers drop again. This is negative feedback and it 1969 American planetary helps maintain the status quo. scientist Andrew Ingersoll highlights the \u201crunaway In other cases, feedback can greenhouse effect\u201d that caused accelerate change. Shrubs, for the planet Venus to heat up. example, may begin to take over from grass on newly colonized land, AFTER casting their shade over the grass, 2018 Ecologists in Alaska depriving it of sunlight, and slowing predict that the accelerating its growth. The shrubs now have release of methane from more water and nutrients, so they formerly frozen lakes will prosper at the expense of the grass. increase global warming. This is positive feedback and it is inherently destabilizing. Ideas about feedback loops first developed early in the 20th century. They were based on the work of two mathematicians\u2014Alfred Lotka (1880\u20131949) in the US and Italian","\u0420\u0415\u041b\u0418\u0417 \u041f\u041e\u0414\u0413\u041e\u0422\u041e\u0412\u0418\u041b\u0410 \u0413\u0420\u0423\u041f\u041f\u0410 \\\"What's News\\\" VK.COM\/WSNWS THE LIVING EARTH 225 See also: Predator\u2013prey equations 44\u201349 \u25a0 Competitive exclusion principle Feedback loops and 52\u201353 \u25a0 Global warming 202\u2013203 \u25a0 Halting climate change 316\u2013321 climate change Vito Volterra (1860\u20131940)\u2014who In a healthy ecosystem, a repeating In recent years, accelerating independently devised equations fluctuation in numbers between prey, and decelerating warming based on the interaction between such as rabbits, and predators, such trends have brought the idea predators and prey. Their equations as foxes, is an example of a negative of feedback loops to the fore showed that a prey population will feedback loop balancing the system. in climate change science. grow rapidly when the number of In 1988, the climate scientist predators drops, while the predator Positive feedback interferes with James Hansen spoke at a US population will drop when prey a balanced ecosystem. If there congressional hearing of the numbers drop, because the is a surplus of resources, or a lack rises in global temperature predators go hungry. The result is of predators, a population can grow caused by human activity. a constant cycle of falling and freely. A bigger population leads to He has since voiced the belief rising predator and prey populations. more births, and so an acceleration that the continued burning of the growth in population. of fossil fuels could set in Balancing the system motion a series of calamitous The predator\u2013prey cycles identified Equally, positive feedback can positive feedbacks on Earth\u2019s by Lotka and Volterra were focused result in an accelerated contraction climate, leading to the on the interaction between single of a population. If fish stocks \u201crunaway greenhouse\u201d he predator and prey species. Since decline in a lagoon, for instance, describes in his 2009 book their studies, the theory of feedback local people may resort to importing Storms of My Grandchildren. loops has developed to embrace canned food. Pollution from the entire ecosystems. Ecologists now dumps where the cans are thrown One warming feedback think that negative feedback loops away can seep into the lagoon, loop is created by the melting are of central importance for the killing the fish\u2014and encouraging of polar ice caps, as newly functioning of all ecosystems, the locals to import even more exposed land and water keeping every part of them naturally of the damaging cans. And yet, absorb the heat that the ice within the bounds of sustainability. positive feedback loops can once reflected back into the Populations can never swell for long sometimes set off a chain of events atmosphere. The melting of beyond the carrying capacity of the that becomes a \u201cvirtuous\u201d circle. Siberian permafrost is another rest of the system to support them. For example, if shrubs are planted warming loop. As temperature Thus, negative feedback regulates in unstable soil, their roots may rises melt the permafrost, an ecosystem and keeps it stable. stabilize the soil, allowing both huge amounts of methane, the shrubs and soil to thrive. \u25a0 a greenhouse gas, could be released into the atmosphere, accelerating global warming. Arctic areas such as Greenland have seen a reduction in summer ice of 72 percent since 1980. The warming of the atmosphere and rising sea levels are part of the resulting positive feedback loop.","\u0420\u0415\u041b\u0418\u0417 \u041f\u041e\u0414\u0413\u041e\u0422\u041e\u0412\u0418\u041b\u0410 \u0413\u0420\u0423\u041f\u041f\u0410 \\\"What's News\\\" VK.COM\/WSNWS FTAHCETHOURM","\u0420\u0415\u041b\u0418\u0417 \u041f\u041e\u0414\u0413\u041e\u0422\u041e\u0412\u0418\u041b\u0410 \u0413\u0420\u0423\u041f\u041f\u0410 \\\"What's News\\\" VK.COM\/WSNWS AN","\u0420\u0415\u041b\u0418\u0417 \u041f\u041e\u0414\u0413\u041e\u0422\u041e\u0412\u0418\u041b\u0410 \u0413\u0420\u0423\u041f\u041f\u0410 \\\"What's News\\\" VK.COM\/WSNWS 228 INTRODUCTION During the Industrial The world\u2019s first Charles Keeling Gene Likens begins Chico Mendes Revolution, London\u2019s national park is starts to record the work to establish lobbies the US created in the US year-on-year rise the relationship Congress to stop \u201cGreat Stink\u201d at Yellowstone between water funding projects prompts legislation in atmospheric quality and that damage the to preserve its carbon dioxide life forms. Amazon rain forest. to curb air and natural habitat. water pollution. levels. 1858 1872 1958 1963 1987 1859 1955 1962 1979 Rabbits are released The term \u201curban Rachel Carson\u2019s The One Child in Australia; their sprawl\u201d is used for book Silent Spring Policy is initiated the first time, by The exposes the harmful population explosion Times newspaper in effects of pesticides in China to results in chaos for the on the environment. control the rapid the UK. population growth. environment. R aw sewage produced Scottish-American environmentalist many forest-dwelling species died by millions of Londoners John Muir was one of the first to out before they were \u201cdiscovered.\u201d once poured into the identify habitat degradation and Thames River for decades, until destruction as problems, and in Deforestation also contributes the stench of the effluent became 1890 he won protection for the to global climate change. As trees so bad that in 1858 action was Yosemite Valley in California. photosynthesize, they absorb demanded. When a new system However, despite a steady increase carbon dioxide and release oxygen. of sewers, pumping stations, and in protected natural environments, However, less forest means that treatment works revolutionized the in the 20th century, the destructive more CO2 stays in the atmosphere, city\u2019s sanitation, deaths and illness pressures of human development fueling the greenhouse effect and from cholera and other bacterial have grown ever more powerful. global warming. infections fell dramatically, and the river became much cleaner. Trees and climate change Carbon and other greenhouse Forest has been especially hard-hit, gases are emitted from cars and Human activity has always mainly due to the dual demands factories burning fossil fuels. Since altered the environment, but its of lumber required for construction 1958, American scientist Charles impact increased dramatically and fuel, and land cleared for Keeling\u2019s measurements of in the mid-18th century with the agriculture and development. atmospheric CO2 have shown that Industrial Revolution that began in An estimated 54,000 sq miles CO2 emissions are increasing at Britain, and spread to Europe, North (140,000 sq km) of tropical rain an ever-faster rate. While a minority America, and beyond. The negative forest\u2014which contains the greatest of scientists maintain that human effects can be broadly divided biodiversity\u2014is cleared each year. activity is not responsible, climate into pollution, and destruction Scientists will never know how change has warmed the continents. of resources and habitats. The consequences, including trees coming into leaf and flowers","\u0420\u0415\u041b\u0418\u0417 \u041f\u041e\u0414\u0413\u041e\u0422\u041e\u0412\u0418\u041b\u0410 \u0413\u0420\u0423\u041f\u041f\u0410 \\\"What's News\\\" VK.COM\/WSNWS THE HUMAN FACTOR 229 The International Charles Moore finds Camille Parmesan Maude Barlow wins Dark Sky a mass of floating and Gary Yohe Canada\u2019s highest environmental Association debris that becomes publish evidence for is founded in order known as the \u201cGreat the climate-change honor for her campaign for global to prevent light Pacific Ocean phenomenon of access to clean water. pollution. Garbage Patch.\u201d \u201cspring creep.\u201d 1988 1997 2003 2008 1992 1999 2003 2014 Canada halts High mortality rates Research finds that Naomi Klein blames its cod fishing in frogs are traced to ocean acidity large corporations viruses exacerbated has surged since for depleting natural industry due industrialization resources and the to excessively by the trade in live began. depleted fish stocks. amphibians. climate crisis. blooming earlier in spring, may caused by emissions of sulfur global population was 3.6 billion. benefit some organisms but could dioxide and nitrogen oxide from By 2018, it had swollen to 7.6 billion, prove disastrous for others. industrial chimneys. As a and although the growth rate result, legislation to control the has slowed considerably, the Toxic controls emissions was passed in the US ever-increasing consumption The introduction of pesticides, such and Europe. After US chemists of natural resources has led to as DDT, to increase crop harvests Frank Rowland and Mario Molina depleted stocks of wood, fossil proved to be an environmental showed that chlorofluorocarbons fuels, minerals, and even fish. The disaster: they eradicated useful (CFCs) destroy atmospheric ozone, collapse of the once bountiful cod invertebrates as well as harmful the use of CFCs was banned fishery off Newfoundland in 1992 ones; they caused cancers in worldwide in 1989. highlighted the vulnerability of our humans; and rendered birds of prey food chain to overfishing and led infertile. Rachel Carson\u2019s 1962 book Light pollution, which affects the Canadian government to Silent Spring highlighted many of beach-nesting turtles, bats, and impose an indefinite moratorium these issues, and caused a partial migrating birds, has proved harder on fishing on the Grand Banks. rethink of pesticide use. The work to control. The International Dark- of several other ecologists has Sky Association is at the forefront Clean water is one of the most resulted in legislative controls to of campaigns for environmentally fundamental requirements for mitigate the environmental impact. responsible lighting. society but almost 1 billion people do not have access to it. A lethal When Gene Likens and his Diminished resources combination of climate change team investigated why previously Garrett Hardin, an American and population growth in some fish-rich lakes had died, they found ecologist, warned of the dangers developing regions threatens that the culprit was acid rain, of overpopulation in 1968, when the to increase this number. \u25a0","\u0420\u0415\u041b\u0418\u0417 \u041f\u041e\u0414\u0413\u041e\u0422\u041e\u0412\u0418\u041b\u0410 \u0413\u0420\u0423\u041f\u041f\u0410 \\\"What's News\\\" VK.COM\/WSNWS DISEASEIPENNOLVCLIRUUOTRNIOMANEBINSTLAAENL POLLUTION","\u0420\u0415\u041b\u0418\u0417 \u041f\u041e\u0414\u0413\u041e\u0422\u041e\u0412\u0418\u041b\u0410 \u0413\u0420\u0423\u041f\u041f\u0410 \\\"What's News\\\" VK.COM\/WSNWS","\u0420\u0415\u041b\u0418\u0417 \u041f\u041e\u0414\u0413\u041e\u0422\u041e\u0412\u0418\u041b\u0410 \u0413\u0420\u0423\u041f\u041f\u0410 \\\"What's News\\\" VK.COM\/WSNWS 232 POLLUTION IN CONTEXT Effects of pollution on health KEY FIGURE The brain. Mental Emma Johnston (1973\u2013) development in children is delayed, BEFORE and the brains of 1272 King Edward I of adults are affected. England bans the burning of sea coal in London because The lungs. Air The heart. Pollution of the smoke it produces. pollution can increases the risk cause cancer, of heart disease 19th century Coal-burning and is linked and stroke. during Britain\u2019s Industrial to asthma. Revolution stunts children\u2019s The reproductive growth and raises death rates The pancreas. system. During from respiratory diseases. Air pollution has pregnancy, the fetus\u2019s brain AFTER been linked to development can 1956 The Clean Air Act is Type 2 diabetes be affected. introduced in the UK, bringing the thick smogs that plagued in adults. its major cities to an end. Polluted air and water cause the deaths of millions of 1963 The Clean Air Act people every year. This illustration describes the specific is passed in the US. damage caused to different organs of the human body. 1972 The Clean Water Act be carried through air and water, thousands of years, indicates is fully ratified in the US. affecting all life. Contaminants such that early humans generated air as plastics can facilitate the invasion pollution from their fires. Analysis 1984 Toxic gas leaks from the of nonindigenous species, as of 2,500-year-old ice cores in Union Carbide India factory discovered by Australian marine Greenland has shown evidence of in Bhopal kill thousands and biologist Emma Johnston. There is air pollution from copper smelting injure many more. also a direct effect on human health: thousands of miles away, in the it is estimated that exposure to center of the Roman Empire. Pollution comes in many polluted air, water, and soil caused However, such impacts were forms, ranging from toxins 9 million premature deaths\u2014one in on a small scale. With the start in the air to trash at the six of all deaths\u2014in 2015. of the Industrial Revolution in bottom of the sea. Any substances Europe, air and water pollution or forms of energy that spoil the Pollution through the ages became serious. Factory chimneys quality of the atmosphere, oceans, Human-made pollution has a long pumped smoke out into the air; water, or soil are pollutants. They history. The presence of soot on toxic chemicals poured into rivers. may be chemicals or biological the walls of caves, dating back Cities expanded quickly and had contaminants (including human waste), products (such as plastics), or noise, light, or heat. The effects of pollution on life of all kinds can be far-reaching, spreading thousands of miles beyond its original source. Pollution can spread through the food chain and","\u0420\u0415\u041b\u0418\u0417 \u041f\u041e\u0414\u0413\u041e\u0422\u041e\u0412\u0418\u041b\u0410 \u0413\u0420\u0423\u041f\u041f\u0410 \\\"What's News\\\" VK.COM\/WSNWS THE HUMAN FACTOR 233 See also: Pesticides 242\u2013247 \u25a0 Acid rain 248\u2013249 \u25a0 Light pollution 252\u2013253 \u25a0 A The \u201cGreat Stink\u201d plastic wasteland 284\u2013285 \u25a0 The water crisis 286\u2013291 \u25a0 Waste disposal 330\u2013331 By the early 19th century, Air pollution control centers fared little better: similarly London\u2019s Thames was the systems still lag behind unsanitary conditions were recorded most polluted river in the economic development. in Berlin in 1870, for example. world. Industrial pollution and human effluent emptied into Bob O\u2019Keefe In the United States, the first two it from thousands of drains. cities to enact laws to ensure clean People complained, but the no sanitation. The Thames River, air were Chicago and Cincinnati, in government did nothing. In in London, was both the source 1881. By that time, the manure from 1855, the scientist Michael of water for domestic use and the 3 million horses pulling wagons in Faraday lambasted politicians outlet for untreated human sewage. North American cities was seeping for their inaction, to no avail. Disease spread, river fish were into water supplies and producing However, they got the message wiped out, and the smell was plagues of disease-causing flies. three years later, when a hot sometimes unbearable. Other urban As horses were gradually replaced summer contributed to the by the internal combustion engine, \u201cGreat Stink\u201d of 1858. The Of the world\u2019s 20 worst cities for air smog from cars and trucks became Houses of Parliament, being pollution, 14 are in India. In Delhi, thick a major issue. London\u2019s Great Smog adjacent to the Thames, were smog in November 2017 reduced the of 1952, described as a \u201cpea-souper\u201d badly affected, and legislation air quality to the equivalent of smoking for the color of the filthy air, killed was suddenly enacted in a 50 cigarettes a day. more than 4,000 people. mere 18 days. Air pollution Civil engineer Joseph The result of harmful substances Bazalgette was commissioned being released into the atmosphere, to design a new sewage such as gases or small particles system. It was based on six called aerosols, air pollution can interceptor sewers, 100 miles have natural sources, such as (160 km) long, which flowed to volcanoes or wildfires, but is mainly new treatment works. Most of caused by human activity. The main London was connected to air pollutants are emissions \u276f\u276f it within a decade. Much of the sewage system is still in operation today, more than 150 years later. This cartoon, published in Punch magazine in July 1858, was entitled \u201cThe Silent Highwayman.\u201d People at the time attributed the spread of cholera to the bad river smells.","\u0420\u0415\u041b\u0418\u0417 \u041f\u041e\u0414\u0413\u041e\u0422\u041e\u0412\u0418\u041b\u0410 \u0413\u0420\u0423\u041f\u041f\u0410 \\\"What's News\\\" VK.COM\/WSNWS 234 POLLUTION The World Health Organization Pollutants entering (WHO) estimates that nine out of the oceans ten people worldwide are breathing Pollution is one of the polluted air, causing widespread 20% 10% biggest problems we are illness and allergies. Furthermore, 20% 10% facing globally, with horrible some aerosols, depending on the 5% future costs to society. composition and color of the 5% particles, block the amount of solar Maria Neira radiation reaching Earth\u2019s surface, 30% thus having a cooling effect on the planet. Efforts to reduce air pollution can therefore make the effects of global warming worse. from fossil-fuel-burning power Rivers, lakes, and seas Air pollutants Offshore oil stations, factories, motor vehicles, Surface water, groundwater, and the Farmland runoff the burning of wood and dung for oceans become contaminated by Sewage Industrial heat and cooking fuel, and methane toxic chemicals from industry, from Litter wastewater from cattle, landfill sites, and chemical runoff from farmland, from Maritime fertilized fields.Poor air quality general trash such as plastics, and transportation damages human health and crops, from human waste. and some fossil-fuel emissions cause In the oceans, the most acutely acid rain, which has killed forests Some rivers and lakes are destructive pollution has resulted and fish in thousands of lakes. so polluted that they can support from disasters involving oil tankers no life at all, deprive communities and oil terminals. When the Exxon Orcas may become extinct as a result of freshwater and food, and carry Valdez supertanker broke up on of PCB (polychlorinated biphenyl) a risk of waterborne diseases, such rocks off the coast of Alaska in 1989, pollutants. The compound becomes as polio, cholera, dysentery, and 11 million gallons (50 million liters) more concentrated higher in the food typhoid. The WHO estimates that of crude oil were released into the chain, and orcas are apex predators. 2 billion people worldwide are North Pacific. The oil smothered or drinking water contaminated with human waste, resulting in the deaths of 500,000 people a year.","\u0420\u0415\u041b\u0418\u0417 \u041f\u041e\u0414\u0413\u041e\u0422\u041e\u0412\u0418\u041b\u0410 \u0413\u0420\u0423\u041f\u041f\u0410 \\\"What's News\\\" VK.COM\/WSNWS THE HUMAN FACTOR 235 Emma Johnston Born in 1973, Australian marine She has also studied marine biologist Emma Johnston was communities in the Antarctic, interested in the oceans from an developed new biomonitoring early age. She gained her Ph.D. in techniques, and advised marine biology in 2002 and, in agencies on the management 2017, became the Dean of Science of estuarine biodiversity. at the University of New South Wales (UNSW), and Head of the Key works UNSW\u2019s Applied Marine and Estuarine Ecology Lab, which 2009 \u201cContaminants reduce investigates human impacts on the richness and evenness of marine ecosystems. marine communities,\u201d Environmental Pollution Johnston discovered how 2017 \u201cBuilding \u2018blue\u2019: an eco- nonnative species can invade engineering framework for waterways in coastal areas by foreshore developments,\u201d Journal adhering to rafts of plastic of Environmental Management pollution floating on the oceans. poisoned an estimated 250,000 in the 1920s. It can cause problems is a form of thermal pollution. It can seabirds, 250 Bald Eagles, 2,800 sea for nocturnal wildlife, for example, kill fish and alter the composition of otters, 300 harbor seals, and 22 because predator\u2013prey relations are the food chain, reducing biodiversity. killer whales. Billions of salmon and interrupted. Excessive noise can be herring eggs also died. Further highly disturbing in cities, on flight Nuclear energy is sometimes catastrophic damage followed in paths, and near factories and roads. viewed as \u201ccleaner\u201d than fossil-fuel 1991, during the Iraq War, when But it also affects wildlife in subtler energy, because it does not produce Iraqi forces opened the valves of an ways. There is evidence that some greenhouse gases, but it does result offshore oil terminal and released at birds now sing at night because in waste that remains radioactive for least 380 million gallons (1,700 their song can be heard more thousands or millions of years. The million liters) into the Persian Gulf. clearly than during the day. industry also bears the inherent risk The long-term effects of such of accidental damage. An explosion disasters are still unfolding and Waste heat, too, can be at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant have yet to be fully understood. damaging. When water from rivers in Ukraine in 1986 killed dozens of or the sea is used as a coolant in people and spread radiation across Much of our nondegradable factories or power stations, the hot Western Europe. The slowly products ends up in the oceans. water that is returned to the source dwindling effects of contamination Since the 1950s, around 8.3 billion on the ecosystem and human health tons of plastic has been produced, In 2015, pollution are predicted to last a century. of which only a fifth has been caused three times recycled or incinerated. Each year, as many deaths as Mitigation measures a staggering 8 million tons of AIDS, tuberculosis, and Tackling the problem of pollution plastic reaches the oceans, and is malaria combined. is a huge challenge, and involves responsible for the deaths of huge Philip Landrigan both cleaning up existing pollution numbers of marine animals. and making changes to reduce the rate at which we add to it. Key Intangible pollutants aspects of this include replacing Pollution in the form of energy, be fossil fuels with sustainable energy, it light, noise, or heat, can be just more recycling and reuse, and the as intrusive as physical waste or replacement of nondegradables chemical emissions. Light pollution with degradable materials. This will from buildings, streetlights, vehicles, take time and, ultimately, demands and advertising billboards was first a fundamental shift in our culture described as a problem in New York of consumption. \u25a0","\u0420\u0415\u041b\u0418\u0417 \u041f\u041e\u0414\u0413\u041e\u0422\u041e\u0412\u0418\u041b\u0410 \u0413\u0420\u0423\u041f\u041f\u0410 \\\"What's News\\\" VK.COM\/WSNWS 236 FGSTOROAVOEDEELCSSTAHFNERNSOOEMT IN CONTEXT ENDANGERED HABITATS KEY FIGURE John Muir (1838\u20131914) BEFORE 1872 Yellowstone, in the states of Wyoming, Montana, and Idaho, is declared a national park\u2014the first in the world. AFTER 1948 The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), a partnership of governments and civil society organizations, is founded. 1961 The World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), initially known as the World Wildlife Fund, is formed, to protect endangered species and habitats. 1971 The Man and the Biosphere Programme (MAB) is founded by the United Nations, to promote sustainable development. It has a global network of Biosphere Reserves. T he origin of the movement to conserve natural habitats is usually credited to the Scottish\u2013American naturalist John Muir, described as the \u201cfather of the national parks.\u201d He was one of the first to realize that in order to survive, wild places needed legal protection. Of the many types of natural habitat on Earth, some are more fragile than others, but each faces different threats, whether anthropogenic (human-made) or from natural causes, or both, and many are critically endangered. Habitats have, of course, always been affected by destructive natural events. Every year, lightning strikes trigger large grassland and forest","\u0420\u0415\u041b\u0418\u0417 \u041f\u041e\u0414\u0413\u041e\u0422\u041e\u0412\u0418\u041b\u0410 \u0413\u0420\u0423\u041f\u041f\u0410 \\\"What's News\\\" VK.COM\/WSNWS THE HUMAN FACTOR 237 See also: Human activity and biodiversity 92\u201395 \u25a0 Biodiversity hotspots 96\u201397 \u25a0 Biomes 206\u2013209 \u25a0 Deforestation 254\u2013259 \u25a0 Environmental ethics 306\u2013307 fires. Hurricanes and rivers in flood Yosemite National Park was created John Muir can wreak havoc. Storm surges may in 1890, thanks to the efforts of John produce inundations of the sea, Muir. The park is famed for its glaciers, Born in Scotland in 1838, John turning freshwater wetlands saline. waterfalls, and granite rock formations, Muir developed a passion for About 65 million years ago, the such as the El Capitan monolith. nature as a boy. He moved Chicxulub meteor impact in Mexico with his family to Wisconsin produced a dust cloud so great that growth of cities, the development at the age of 11. In 1867, he it stopped sunlight from reaching of large-scale industry based on the had an accident in which he Earth\u2019s surface. Plants struggled extraction of fossil fuels and raw lost his sight temporarily, after to photosynthesize, and many materials, a growing agricultural which he \u201csaw the world in a animals, including the dinosaurs, demand to feed more people, and new light.\u201d An accomplished became extinct. conflict and war. All these have botanist, geologist, and taken their toll on the natural world. glaciologist, Muir visited the Nor is human influence an Yosemite Valley in California exclusively recent issue. Throughout Fragile ecoregions in 1868, and later determined history, people have modified their A concept that is now often used to preserve it from the scourge environment. Deforestation, for to identify the major habitat types of domestic sheep (which he example, is not a new problem. In on Earth is that of the ecoregion\u2014 called \u201choofed locusts\u201d). In Europe, the clearance of forests for smaller than a biome, with a more 1903, Muir took President agriculture and construction began detailed gauge of biodiversity. Theodore Roosevelt on a thousands of years ago, and a similar Ecoregions are defined as large guided tour through the pattern followed in North America. units of land or water containing Yosemite Valley, and their a geographically distinct mix of three-day trip inspired However, the impact of modern- species, natural communities, and Roosevelt to create the US day humans on the environment is environmental conditions. Some Forestry Service and, in unprecedented. In the past 200 examples include deserts, tropical \u276f\u276f 1916, to form the National years, the human population has Conservation Commission. exploded. This has fueled the rapid Until his death in 1914, Muir continued to advocate for the conservation of land such as Mount Rainier, which became a National Park in 1899. Key works 1874 Studies in the Sierra 1901 Our National Parks 1911 My First Summer in the Sierra","\u0420\u0415\u041b\u0418\u0417 \u041f\u041e\u0414\u0413\u041e\u0422\u041e\u0412\u0418\u041b\u0410 \u0413\u0420\u0423\u041f\u041f\u0410 \\\"What's News\\\" VK.COM\/WSNWS 238 ENDANGERED HABITATS Natural factors can put Humans can put absorb the greenhouse gas carbon pressure on a habitat. pressure on a habitat. dioxide, thereby contributing to the acceleration of climate change. Pressures include Pressures include storms, floods, wildfires, deforestation, urban Loss of coral reefs Coral reefs are important ecoregions volcanic activity, and sprawl, mining, and yet are especially endangered. even meteor strikes. industrialization, They support about 25 percent of pollution, and war. the planet\u2019s marine species, and are also nurseries for billions of fish. The habitat becomes endangered Two-thirds of the world\u2019s reefs are under threat, and about a quarter rain forests, temperate coniferous Once deforestation starts, the of them are likely damaged beyond forests, lakes, mangrove swamps, problem quickly gets worse. When repair. Possibly the biggest threat and coral reefs. Of these, coral reefs rain falls on a forested slope, it is to coral reefs is increased acidity and tropical rain forests are under mostly absorbed by vegetation. caused by a greater uptake of CO2 particular threat from humankind. But when the slope is cleared, the from the atmosphere. This impedes rainfall erodes the soil, making it the ability of many sea creatures Rain forest clearance useless for agriculture and to build their shells, and induces Despite covering only 6 percent impossible to replant. It produces coral \u201cbleaching,\u201d which is a step of Earth\u2019s land surface, tropical rain silt runoff into rivers and lakes, on the way to the reef dying. forests represent the greatest killing fish, and increases the risk In addition, coral reefs are being biomass of any terrestrial ecoregion, of flooding. The destruction of any destroyed by overfishing, and by and are home to about 80 percent forest reduces its capacity to harmful practices such as cyanide of land species. Every year, some and blast fishing, and bottom 54,000 sq miles (140,000 sq km) of trawling. Sediment resulting from tropical rain forest is cleared\u2014the coastal development blocks the equivalent of a soccer field every sunlight that reefs need. Chemical second. Logging is carried out for pollution, coral mining, and careless firewood and construction materials, tourism all add to the burden and is also driven by the demand for on this highly sensitive habitat. roads, settlements, and agriculture. Wide-ranging impacts Globally, the rain forests that All over the world, diverse natural are under greatest threat are in habitats are critically threatened by West Africa, Central America, and human activity. Tropical deciduous Southeast Asia. Indeed, only about dry forest is easier to clear than 30 percent of the lowland rain forest rain forest, and on Madagascar, in Borneo now survives . In the where dry forest was widespread, Amazon Basin, home to nearly less than 8 percent now remains. At one-third of the world\u2019s rain forest, one time, tallgrass prairie stretched much of the clearance is for across the US Midwest, but only agriculture, especially ranching. 3 percent of it is left: the rest has been converted to farmland. Many wetlands have been drained for Palm oil trees are being planted on a large scale in Indonesia and Malaysia, where this is one of the main drivers of deforestation. Orangutans are among the species endangered as a result.","\u0420\u0415\u041b\u0418\u0417 \u041f\u041e\u0414\u0413\u041e\u0422\u041e\u0412\u0418\u041b\u0410 \u0413\u0420\u0423\u041f\u041f\u0410 \\\"What's News\\\" VK.COM\/WSNWS THE HUMAN FACTOR 239 Protected areas Wetlands and intertidal zones are gases. Conservation is now National parks, wilderness important for marine invertebrates and paramount, and ecologists work areas, nature reserves, and migratory shorebirds, but in many parts to refine their understanding sites of special scientific of the world they have been drained for of the best ways to go about it. interest (SSSIs) are all types of industry and ports. protected habitats. Within Appropriate measures depend these areas, interference with agriculture or urban development; on the situation, and range from the the natural environment is others are irreversibly damaged creation of protected reserves or prohibited or limited by some by pollution. Nutrient runoff from \u201ccorridors,\u201d to link areas that have kind of legal framework. They agricultural fertilizers has spoiled become fragmented, to projects must cover a specified many lakes and rivers. In many to recreate lost habitat. Sustainable expanse of land or sea, but countries, intertidal zones have sources of fuel and timber for those they vary greatly in size and in been destroyed by the building who are otherwise dependant on the level of protection given. of ports. Coastal development has forest wood are also important, as Just over 10 percent of Earth\u2019s been largely responsible for the loss is banning the trade in rain forest land is protected, but only 1.7 of 35 percent of mangrove swamps. hardwood. Since the impact of percent of the oceans; though In the tropics and subtropics, habitat destruction is global, marine reserves are essential, overgrazing by domestic animals international agreements and they require local and national such as goats has converted an cooperation are crucial. \u25a0 governments to agree on key estimated 3.5 million sq miles issues such as fishing rights. (9 million sq km) of seasonally dry grassland and scrub into desert. Marae Moana, the largest protected area on Earth, is 772,000 sq miles (2 million sq km) around the Cook Islands in the Pacific Ocean. It is home to sea turtles, at least 136 species of corals, and 21 whales and dolphins. The biggest land reserve is the Northeast Greenland National Park, which covers almost 386,000 sq miles (1 million sq km) of ice sheet and tundra. Halting the decline In every walk with Muskoxen are Arctic herd animals The destruction of these habitats is nature, one receives far whose numbers were severely not only a loss in terms of natural depleted in the 19th century by beauty and biodiversity, but also more than he needs. hunting. They now live on reserves creates serious problems for people: John Muir in Alaska, Norway, and Siberia. for example, poorer water quality, declining fish stocks, crashes in populations of pollinators, flooding from increased rainwater runoff, and faster buildup of greenhouse","\u0420\u0415\u041b\u0418\u0417 \u041f\u041e\u0414\u0413\u041e\u0422\u041e\u0412\u0418\u041b\u0410 \u0413\u0420\u0423\u041f\u041f\u0410 \\\"What's News\\\" VK.COM\/WSNWS 240 OCWTHFHEEAAANBRRGEAEIGNPSIGINDENPELIYLINNAGGNSET THE KEELING CURVE IN CONTEXT T he Keeling Curve, named more heat to be trapped, leading to after Charles Keeling, an an overall increase in temperature KEY FIGURE American scientist, charts and global climate change. Charles Keeling (1928\u20132005) the daily record of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2), measured in Measuring CO2 levels BEFORE parts per million by volume (ppmv), Since the start of the Industrial 1896 The Swedish chemist in a series dating back to 1958. Revolution in the late 1700s, human Svante Arrhenius is the first It shows two things: the natural activity has produced increasing to estimate the extent to seasonal respiration of Earth and emissions of CO2. This is largely which atmospheric CO2 could the year-on-year rise in atmospheric due to burning fossil fuels, while increase Earth\u2019s temperature. CO2. Atmospheric CO2 is significant forest clearance for agriculture and because carbon dioxide is the most development has resulted in less 1938 Comparing historic important of the greenhouse gases, vegetation absorbing CO2 through temperature data and CO2 which trap warmth in Earth\u2019s photosynthesis. Many scientists measurements, the British atmosphere. More molecules of CO2 once believed that excess CO2 engineer and scientist Guy and other greenhouse gases cause would be absorbed by the oceans. Stewart Callendar concludes Others disagreed, but there was that the increase in CO2 is We were witnessing for little hard evidence either way. responsible for the warming the first time nature\u2019s of the atmosphere. withdrawing CO2 from the Charles Keeling was not the air for plant growth during first to propose a link between AFTER summer and returning it atmospheric warming and CO2 2002 The European Space each succeeding winter. emissions. Others had measured Agency\u2019s ENVISAT satellite CO2 levels but had produced only begins to produce up to 5,000 Charles Keeling \u201csnapshots\u201d in time rather than a readings of greenhouse gases long-term dataset. Keeling knew every day. that a long study was needed to prove the link. In 1956, he took up 2014 NASA\u2019s Orbiting Carbon a post at the Scripps Institution of Observatory generates up to Oceanography in San Diego, 100,000 high-precision California, and obtained funds to measurements daily. establish CO2 monitoring stations at remote locations 9,843ft (3,000m) up on Mauna Loa, Hawaii, and at the South Pole. By 1960, Keeling","\u0420\u0415\u041b\u0418\u0417 \u041f\u041e\u0414\u0413\u041e\u0422\u041e\u0412\u0418\u041b\u0410 \u0413\u0420\u0423\u041f\u041f\u0410 \\\"What's News\\\" VK.COM\/WSNWS THE HUMAN FACTOR 241 See also: Global warming 202\u2013203 \u25a0 The biosphere 204\u2013205 \u25a0 Environmental CO2 analysis in icecaps feedback loops 224\u2013225 \u25a0 Halting climate change 316\u2013321 Scientists can measure past Mauna Loa in Hawaii is an ideal site reflecting seasonal changes. During concentrations of carbon for an atmospheric research station. The spring and summer in the Northern dioxide by analyzing bubbles high altitude and remote location of the Hemisphere, as new foliage takes of air trapped in Antarctic and volcano ensure that the air is largely more CO2 out of the atmosphere, Greenland ice sheets. This unaffected by humans or vegetation. the global concentration of the gas evidence indicates that there declines, reaching a low point in have been several cycles of was sure that he had a long-enough September. It increases again in variation over the past 400,000 series of records to detect a year- the northern autumn as leaves fall years. These range from lower on-year increase. and photosynthesis declines. Plant readings in the most severe growth in the Southern Hemisphere glaciations\u2014when glaciers Seasonal changes later in the year does not make up actually formed\u2014to higher Although South Pole funding ended for the loss, because most of Earth\u2019s readings during warmer, in 1964, Mauna Loa has produced vegetative cover is in the north. interglacial periods. The data from 1958 onward. Plotted on a increase since the start of the graph, the measurements became Ancient air bubbles trapped in Industrial Revolution has been known as the Keeling Curve. It is, polar ice cores reveal that, over the matched by the average global in fact, a series of annual curves, past 11,000 years, average CO2 temperature. This has risen concentrations were 275\u2013285 ppmv, by 0.13\u00b0F (0.07\u00b0C) per decade Mauna Loa CO2 record but increased sharply from the mid- since 1880 and 0.31\u00b0F (0.17\u00b0C) (1958\u20132015) 19th century. In 1958, the level was per decade since 1970. 316 ppmv. It rose steadily at a rate 400 of 1.3\u20131.4 ppmv each year until the The Intergovernmental mid-1970s, then increased by about Panel on Climate Change 380 2 ppmv each year. By spring 2018 it (IPCC) warns that unless the had hit 411 ppmv, almost 1.5 times world's governments reduce 360 higher than preindustrial levels. \u25a0 greenhouse gas emissions dramatically, by the year 2100 average temperatures could be around 7.7\u00b0F (4.3\u00b0C) higher than they were before the Industrial Revolution. Such an increase would cause both a marked rise in sea levels and more extreme weather, which would result in people having to abandon some regions of the world entirely. CO2concentration (ppmv) 340 The Keeling Curve of steadily rising Bubbles in an ice core provide CO2 levels is clearly shown on a graph a sample of the atmosphere going 320 1970 1980 1990 2000 2010 plotting results from the continuous back centuries. Scientists measure 1960 Years monitoring of atmospheric carbon the CO2 in the trapped air bubbles. dioxide (CO2) at Mauna Loa, Hawaii.","\u0420\u0415\u041b\u0418\u0417 \u041f\u041e\u0414\u0413\u041e\u0422\u041e\u0412\u0418\u041b\u0410 \u0413\u0420\u0423\u041f\u041f\u0410 \\\"What's News\\\" VK.COM\/WSNWS BTHAERRCAHGEMEIHCAASL FBEAENBHRURILCEDOAGFAINLSTIFTHEE THE LEGACY OF PESTICIDES","\u0420\u0415\u041b\u0418\u0417 \u041f\u041e\u0414\u0413\u041e\u0422\u041e\u0412\u0418\u041b\u0410 \u0413\u0420\u0423\u041f\u041f\u0410 \\\"What's News\\\" VK.COM\/WSNWS","\u0420\u0415\u041b\u0418\u0417 \u041f\u041e\u0414\u0413\u041e\u0422\u041e\u0412\u0418\u041b\u0410 \u0413\u0420\u0423\u041f\u041f\u0410 \\\"What's News\\\" VK.COM\/WSNWS 244 THE LEGACY OF PESTICIDES IN CONTEXT A rguably the most revered Spraying insecticide such as and influential book ever DDT whether indoors or outside, has KEY FIGURE published on the subject been\u2014and in some places still is\u2014a Rachel Carson (1907\u201364) of environmentalism, Silent Spring common method of controlling the garnered a huge amount of mosquitoes that transmit malaria. BEFORE publicity when it was released in 1854 Henry David Thoreau\u2019s 1962. It galvanized the fledgling Boston Herald. It spoke about aerial book Walden describes a social conservation movement, forced spraying of a mixture of fuel oil and experiment to live the simple legislative change, and, perhaps a chemical compound named DDT life in tune with nature. It is most significantly, championed the (dichloro-diphenyl-trichloroethane), seen as an inspiration for the right of the public to question those in the vicinity of her small bird environmentalist movement. in power and hold them to account. sanctuary in Michigan. The morning after the spraying, 1949 A Sand County Almanac However, the author of this Huckins found several birds dead by Aldo Leopold proposes a ground-breaking work was far from on her property and hoped that deep ecology of people living the typical \u201ceco-warrior\u201d\u2014a term Carson might know someone in in harmony with the land. that was unheard of when the book Washington who could stop further was first published. On the spraying. Carson was outraged and AFTER contrary, Rachel Carson was a resolved to help. For more than a 1970 The US establishes quiet, scholarly woman, with decade she had been aware of the Environmental Protection a masters degree in zoology and troubling incidents in which Agency (EPA). 20 years\u2019 service as an aquatic biologist in the United States. Most 1989 Bill McKibben\u2019s book of all, she was an exceptional The End of Nature highlights writer, able to fuse scientific fact the dangers of global warming. with compelling narrative. 2006 The documentary An Dying wildlife Inconvenient Truth records Like many great and influential former US vice president Al works, Silent Spring began in a very Gore\u2019s efforts to educate the personal way. In January 1958, public about climate change. Carson\u2019s friend Olga Huckins sent her a letter that she had originally tried to have published in the Rachel Carson Born in 1907, Rachel Carson grew wrote books about marine up on a farm in Pennsylvania, biology, most notably The Sea where she developed a love of Around Us, which won the nature. She won a scholarship to National Book Award, and was a Pennsylvania College for Women national best seller. This success and later gained a masters in enabled Carson to write full zoology. Growing up in a land- time and she began work on locked state, Carson dreamed of Silent Spring in 1958. In 1960, the ocean; it became an enduring Carson was diagnosed with passion, and she went to work as breast cancer; she died in 1964. an aquatic biologist with the US Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS). Key works Carson wrote and published 1941 Under the Sea Wind many educational brochures and 1951 The Sea Around Us eventually became the US Fish 1955 The Edge of the Sea and Wildlife Service\u2019s editor-in- 1962 Silent Spring chief. From 1941 onward, she","\u0420\u0415\u041b\u0418\u0417 \u041f\u041e\u0414\u0413\u041e\u0422\u041e\u0412\u0418\u041b\u0410 \u0413\u0420\u0423\u041f\u041f\u0410 \\\"What's News\\\" VK.COM\/WSNWS THE HUMAN FACTOR 245 See also: Human activity and biodiversity 92\u201395 \u25a0 Animal ecology 106\u2013113 \u25a0 The ecosystem 134\u2013137 \u25a0 A holistic view of Earth 210\u2013211 \u25a0 Man\u2019s devastation of Earth 299 \u25a0 Environmental ethics 306\u2013307 indiscriminate spraying of DDT had used to kill a wide range of insects, DDT does not break been killing wildlife. Carson swiftly due to its pervasive action as a down easily. approached the editor of the New nerve poison. It was used during Yorker, E.B. White, suggesting that World War II to control insects DDT is fat soluble the magazine run a piece about the that destroyed vital food crops as and accumulates growing concern around synthetic well as those which transmitted pesticides and their effect on malaria, typhus, and dengue fever in the body fat nontarget organisms. The editor to combat troops. of animals. suggested that she write the article herself. Reluctantly, Carson began DDT proved cheap to produce, DDT is a broad-spectrum research on what she at first called highly effective, and at first poison, that affects not \u201cthe poison book.\u201d It went on to appeared to pose no threat to only the target pest shake the world. human beings. After the war, with but other insects, fish, the chemical in plentiful supply, its mammals, and birds. The chemical future use in agriculture was an obvious DDT can travel long Silent Spring\u2019s impact needs to be next step. With its wide range of distances in the seen against the backdrop of the apparently safe applications, it upper atmosphere. time in which it was published. must have seemed like a panacea Although academics and scientists to farmers, who happily sprayed it DDT causes had already voiced concerns about on their crops, often without the lasting harm synthetic pesticides, the public use of masks or protective clothing, throughout the was oblivious to this issue. because they did not fully appreciate food chain. the powerful toxicity of this Synthesized pesticides had dangerous chemical compound. been in use since the 1920s but had advanced significantly during World After DDT came a whole host of War II, powered by military-funded synthetic agrochemicals, including research. During the 1950s, the aldrin, dieldrin, endrin, parathion, popular notion was that they could malathion, captan, and 2,4-D. Used solve the world\u2019s problems of in conjunction with fertilizers made famine and sickness by killing out of surplus nitrogen that was no pests that destroyed crops and longer needed to make explosives, transmitted disease. Advertising these chemicals enabled the \u276f\u276f campaigns of chemical giants such as Union Carbide, DuPont, Mobil, No one since [Silent Spring] and Shell spread this message to a would be able to huge audience. Silent Spring aimed to challenge the received wisdom, sell pollution as the arguing that the so-called scientific necessary underside progress enjoyed in post-war of progress so easily. America would come at a huge H. Patricia Hynes price for the environment. The most notorious of the pesticides, and the one most associated with Silent Spring, was DDT. It was first synthesized in the late 19th century, but in 1939, Swiss chemist Paul Hermann M\u00fcller realized that it could be","\u0420\u0415\u041b\u0418\u0417 \u041f\u041e\u0414\u0413\u041e\u0422\u041e\u0412\u0418\u041b\u0410 \u0413\u0420\u0423\u041f\u041f\u0410 \\\"What's News\\\" VK.COM\/WSNWS 246 THE LEGACY OF PESTICIDES A persistent poison DDT biomagnification in the food chain DDT (dichloro-diphenyl- TERTIARY 13.8 PPM trichloroethane) belongs CONSUMERS to a group of pesticides called organochlorides. It SECONDARY 2.07 PPM kills insects on contact by CONSUMERS 0.23 PPM interfering with their nerve impulses. The compound is fat PRIMARY soluble and is deposited in the CONSUMERS tissues of animals exposed to it, either directly or by eating PRODUCERS 0.04 PPM contaminated food. Repeated exposure to DDT results in it Organisms higher in the food chain suffer from the impacts of DDT the most. building up in the body fat and In producers, the poison only represents 0.04 ppm (parts per million), but the becoming toxic. concentration increases with each step up the food chain. By the time tertiary consumers are involved, levels are high enough to have toxic effects. DDT also biomagnifies up the food chain. Humans are susceptible to poisoning from regular exposure to DDT and while the effects of small amounts in the environment are unknown, it has been associated with cancer, infertility, miscarriage, and diabetes. It is now banned in western countries, but studies carried out by the US Center for Disease Control in 2003\u20134 found DDT or its breakdown product (DDE) in the blood of 99 percent of people tested. A spray as indiscriminate intensification of farming. The stated that caution was essential as DDT can upset the chemical age had dawned and by in the use of DDT because the true economy of nature\u2026 1952, there were almost 10,000 impact of the product was not yet Ninety percent of all separate new pesticide products fully understood. The following insects are good, and if registered with the US Department year, Fred Bishop, writing in the of Agriculture (USDA). American Journal of Public Health, they are killed, things go stressed that DDT must not be out of kilter right away. Raising awareness allowed to get into foods or be Edwin Way Teale Carson was not the first person to ingested by accident. notice the harmful effects of DDT. There were a few early dissenters, Various scientific studies and including nature writer Edwin reports also raised concerns. For Way Teale, who warned that a example, in 1945 the US government spray with the indiscriminate published a study that found traces impact of DDT could upset the of DDT in the milk of cows sprayed balance of nature. In 1945, the with the chemical. It recommended director of the US Fish and Wildlife that farmers use \u201csafe alternative Service (FWS), Dr Clarence Cottam, substitute insecticides\u201d to control flies and lice on cattle. Carson\u2019s","\u0420\u0415\u041b\u0418\u0417 \u041f\u041e\u0414\u0413\u041e\u0422\u041e\u0412\u0418\u041b\u0410 \u0413\u0420\u0423\u041f\u041f\u0410 \\\"What's News\\\" VK.COM\/WSNWS THE HUMAN FACTOR 247 They should Yorker\u2014which had published a Man is part of nature not be called serialization of the book. However, and his war against insecticides Carson was prepared for this kind nature is inevitably a but biocides. of response. She knew the book war against himself. Rachel Carson would be controversial and seen as threatening by the chemical Rachel Carson longstanding position as editor-in- industry. Therefore, as well as chief at the FWS until 1952 meant meticulously tracking and recording protect the environment. The that she had access to a great many her research\u2014which had been Committee released a report of these reports; she found them to gained from government bodies, her entitled \u201cThe Uses of Pesticides,\u201d be very disturbing reading. contacts in research institutions, which broadly supported Carson\u2019s and other reputable sources\u2014she book. Inspired by Carson, activists Since the research was rather also had the manuscript reviewed continued to lobby government until scattered and by no means by scientists and experts. in 1972, a decade after Silent Spring accessible for the general reader, was first published, DDT was Carson resolved to gather what When suing Carson did not banned in the US. Other countries material she could find and present work, the chemical companies followed, although some retain it to it in a way that the ordinary non- launched a campaign to bring her control mosquitoes. scientist could understand. As she into disrepute, stooping to personal made progress with the writing attacks such as depicting Carson The legacy of Silent Spring is of Silent Spring, it became clear as a \u201chysterical\u201d cat-loving woman, greater than the banning of DDT. to her that she had a moral duty to who was ill-equipped to write It demonstrated to industry giants make the information public. As such a book. The smear campaign and government the power of an well as documenting the hazards backfired, merely increasing the educated public. \u25a0 of indiscriminate pesticide use, sales of Silent Spring. Carson dared to suggest that the chemical companies were putting New policies profits before people and that Notable scientists supported the government might even be Carson\u2019s findings and US President colluding with them, knowingly John F. Kennedy invited her to or otherwise, by failing to regulate testify before a Congressional the industry effectively. Committee in 1963. She called for new policies that would serve to The response from the US chemical industry was predictable. At first, they tried to sue Carson, her publishers, and The New After DDT was banned in many countries, Osprey populations\u2014which had declined significantly from the 1940s\u2014began to recover. Ospreys had eaten small animals affected by DDT.","\u0420\u0415\u041b\u0418\u0417 \u041f\u041e\u0414\u0413\u041e\u0422\u041e\u0412\u0418\u041b\u0410 \u0413\u0420\u0423\u041f\u041f\u0410 \\\"What's News\\\" VK.COM\/WSNWS 248 FTAROLOOPMNOGLDIITJSIOCCUOARLVNEAERCYYTION ACID RAIN IN CONTEXT T he effects of acid rain on water quality and life forms in the stone were noticed as long Hubbard Brook drainage basin in KEY FIGURE ago as the 17th century New Hampshire. They discovered Gene Likens (1935\u2013) in England, and in Norway in the that the rainfall there was unusually 19th century. However, it was not acidic. Acidity, as expressed by pH BEFORE until American ecologist Gene (potential of hydrogen), ranges from 1667 The corrosive effect of Likens carried out in-depth studies 0 (most acidic) through 7 (neutral), polluted city air on limestone in an area of rural New Hampshire to 14 (least acidic). Most fish and and marble is noted by the that the phenomenon came to be other aquatic animals fare best in English diarist John Evelyn. properly understood. water with pH values of 6\u20138, but Likens found values of 4\u2014too acid 1852 British chemist Robert From 1963 onward, freshwater for fish, frogs, and the insects they Angus Smith argues that ecologist Likens and his team eat to survive. He set up monitoring industrial pollution causes the studied the relationship between stations around New England, acidic rainfall that damages which showed that acid rain and buildings. He is the first person snowfall were widespread in the to call it \u201cacid rain.\u201d densely populated and heavily industrialized northeastern states. AFTER Likens\u2019s systematic work persuaded 1980 The US Congress the US government to introduce passes the Acid Deposition laws to control emissions of the Act, undertaking an extensive chemicals responsible for acid rain. 18-year research program into acid rain. Effects of acid rain When fossil fuels are burned in 1990 An amendment to the power stations and factories, sulfur US Clean Air Act (passed dioxide (SO2) and nitrogen oxides originally in 1963) establishes spew out of their chimneys. a system that is designed to effectively control Acid rain had been wearing away emissions of sulfur dioxide stonework\u2014such as this statue in the and nitrogen oxides. churchyard of St. Peter and St. Paul, Krakow, Poland\u2014for hundreds of years before the phenomenon was understood."]
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