Scientists Debate Gaia: The Next Century

Cover Page......Page 1
Title Page......Page 4
ISBN 0262194988......Page 5
Contents (with page links)......Page 6
Foreword......Page 12
Preface......Page 14
Reflections on Gaia James Lovelock......Page 20
Gaia by Any Other Name Lynn Margulis......Page 26
I PRINCIPLES AND PROCESSES......Page 32
1 Clarifying Gaia: Regulation with or without Natural Selection......Page 34
2 Gaia Is Life in a Wasteworld of By-products......Page 46
3 Models and Geophysiological Hypotheses......Page 56
4 Gaia: Toward a Thermodynamics of Life......Page 64
5 Gaia, Extended Organisms, and Emergent Homeostasis......Page 76
6 Homeostatic Gaia: An Ecologist’s Perspective on the Possibility of Regulation......Page 90
II EARTH HISTORY AND CYCLES......Page 96
7 Phosphorus, a Servant Faithful to Gaia? Biosphere Remediation Rather Than Regulation......Page 98
8 Self-Regulation of Ocean Composition by the Biosphere......Page 112
9 A New Biogeochemical Earth System Model for the Phanerozoic......Page 120
10 Gaia and Glaciation: Lipalian (Vendian) Environmental Crisis......Page 134
11 Does Life Drive Disequilibrium in the Biosphere?......Page 148
12 Biotic Plunder: Control of the Environment by Biological Exhaustion of Resources......Page 156
III PHILOSOPHY, HISTORY, AND HUMAN DIMENSIONS OF GAIA......Page 168
13 Gaia: The Living Earth—2,500 Years of Precedents in Natural Science and Philosophy......Page 170
14 Concerned with Trifles? A Geophysiological Reading of Charles Darwin’s Last Book......Page 180
15 Gradient Reduction Theory: Thermodynamics and the Purpose of Life......Page 192
16 Gaia and Complexity......Page 206
17 Gaia and Observer Self-selection......Page 220
18 Taming Gaia: The History of the Dutch Lowlands as an Analogy to Global Change......Page 230
19 Gaia and the Human Species......Page 242
IV QUANTIFYING DATA......Page 248
20 Daisyworld Homeostasis and the Earth System......Page 250
21 Salvaging the Daisyworld Parable under the Dynamic Area Fraction Framework......Page 260
22 Food Web Complexity Enhances Ecological and Climatic Stability in a Gaian Ecosystem Model......Page 274
23 Gaia in the Machine: The Artificial Life Approach......Page 286
24 On Causality and Ice Age Deglaciations......Page 300
25 Amazonian Biogeography as a Test for Gaia......Page 310
26 Modeling Feedbacks Between Water and Vegetation in the North African Climate System......Page 316
V LIFE FORMS AND GAIA: MICROBES TO EXTRATERRESTRIALS......Page 326
27 Extraterrestrial Gaias......Page 328
28 The Tinto River, an Extreme Gaian Environment......Page 340
29 Climate and the Amazon—a Gaian System?......Page 354
30 On the Co-evolution of Life and Its Environment......Page 362
31 Stability and Instability in Ecological Systems: Gaia Theory and Evolutionary Biology......Page 372
Appendix Studying Gaia: The NASA Planetary Biology Internship (PBI) Program......Page 382
Contributors......Page 384
Index (with page links)......Page 388