The Ecology Book

199 See also: Evolution by natural selection 24–31 ■ Global warming 202–203 ■ The Keeling Curve 240–241 ■ Ozone depletion 260–26 ...

200 T he places where animals and plants live often vary in a regular manner along geographic gradients of latitude, elevation, ...

201 All of Siberia is in the Palearctic region, and the Siberian white birch trees depicted here are part of a subdivision calle ...

202 GLOBAL WARMING ISN'T A PREDICTION. IT IS HAPPENING. GLOBAL WARMING I n 1896, Swedish chemist Svante Arrhenius became the fir ...

203 See also: Environmental feedback loops 224–225 ■ Renewable energy 300–305 ■ The Green Movement 308–309 ■ Halting climate cha ...

204 LIVING MATTER IS THE MOST POWERFUL GEOLOGICAL FORCE THE BIOSPHERE E arth has four interacting subsystems: the lithosphere, E ...

205 Over billions of years layers of cyanobacteria have fossilized to form stromatolites—mounds of sedimentary rock, as seen her ...

206 THE SYSTEM OF NATURE BIOMES D ifferent parts of the world have varying patterns of plant and animal life, but there are usua ...

207 See also: The distribution of species over space and time 162–163 ■ Climax com mu n it y 172 –173 ■ Open community theory 17 ...

208 BIOMES botanist Arthur Tansley introduced the term “ecosystem” in 1935. When Clements and Shelford published the results of ...

209 Tropical rainforest is the hottest and wettest biome and covers 7 per cent of Earth’s surface. One of the oldest biomes, it ...

210 T he American ecologist Eugene Odum was not the first scientist to write about ecology, but in the 1950s he proposed that it ...

211 See also: The ecosystem 134–137 ■ Macroecology 185 ■ The peaceful coexistence of humankind and nature 297 ■ The Green Moveme ...

212 PLATE TECTONICS IS NOT ALL HAVOC AND DESTRUCTION MOVING CONTINENTS AND EVOLUTION T he surface of Earth is constantly moving, ...

THE LIVING EARTH 213 Wegener’s theory was not well received at first. In 1943, George Gaylord Simpson, one of the most influenti ...

214 LIFE CHANGES EARTH TO ITS OWN PURPOSES THE GAIA HYPOTHESIS I n 1979, British scientist James Lovelock’s book Gaia: A New Loo ...

215 See also: The ecosystem 134–137 ■ Evolutionarily stable state 154–155 ■ The biosphere 204–205 ■ A holistic view of Earth 210 ...

216 the interactions of living organisms and their physical surroundings— including the cycles of oxygen, carbon, nitrogen, and ...

THE LIVING EARTH 217 conducive to more complex forms of life. Eventually, the equilibrium conditions that exist on Earth today w ...

65 MILLION YEARS AGO SOMETHING KILLED HALF OF ALL THE LIFE ON THE EARTH MASS EXTINCTIONS US_218-223_Mass_Extinctions.indd 218 12 ...