In Stability of Life on Earth , Professor Kondratyev and his team show that the concept of biotic regulation is of fundamental importance in solving a wide range of environmental and other problems. They put forward a new approach to the solution of old environmental problems. Beginning with a look at the geographic environment and structural units within it, they show that ecosystems represent a set of homogeneous, closely-correlated communities of organisms and their environment. Biologists call such correlated communities 'biogeocenoses', and they are similar to the corporate structures in economic systems and interact competitively with each other. On the basis of competitive interaction in the biosphere, self-organisation and management take place. The authors show how human economic activity perturbed balances in natural biogeochemical cycles, eliminating and strongly modifying natural land cover, the 20 th Century being the time when human activities 'collided' with Nature. They consider scientific bases for the stability and sustainability of life, and demonstrate how the scale and intensity of human-induced destruction of Nature and resultant feedback mechanisms have continuously expanded. They consider the likelihood of increasing numbers of natural disasters as a result of such activities, and propose that sustainable development should become a principal research topic during the 21 st Century.

Explains to the reader how the activity of biota in the maintenance and regulation of natural cycles create and manage a safe natural environment for all life on Earth Highlights the ways in which human activities on local, regional and global scales have perturbed natural biogeochemical cycles; 'colliding' with Nature Reviews the latest, most up-to-date attempts to model natural cycles and the balances of nutrients in ecosystems which are fundamental to biotic regulation of the environment Demonstrates why it is important that sustainable development should become a principal research topic during the 21st Century

Klappentext

In Stability of Life on Earth, Professor Kondratyev and his team show that the concept of biotic regulation is of fundamental importance in solving a wide range of environmental and other problems. They put forward a new approach to the solution of old environmental problems. Beginning with a look at the geographic environment and structural units within it, they show that ecosystems represent a set of homogeneous, closely-correlated communities of organisms and their environment. Biologists call such correlated communities biogeocenoses , and they are similar to the corporate structures in economic systems and interact competitively with each other. On the basis of competitive interaction in the biosphere, self-organisation and management take place. The authors show how human economic activity perturbed balances in natural biogeochemical cycles, eliminating and strongly modifying natural land cover, the 20th Century being the time when human activities collided with Nature. They consider scientific bases for the stability and sustainability of life, and demonstrate how the scale and intensity of human-induced destruction of Nature and resultant feedback mechanisms have continuously expanded. They consider the likelihood of increasing numbers of natural disasters as a result of such activities, and propose that sustainable development should become a principal research topic during the 21st Century.

Inhalt

1. Ecological-geographic space: a fresh view of the old problems,- 2. Geographic environment: structure and processes,- 3. Structural units of the geographic environment,- 4. Humans are changing the geographic environment,- 5. Formation of world community and its ideologies,- 6. XX century: time of collison with nature,- 7. Scientific basis of life stability,- 8. Carbon budget, role of biota and ecosystems' cost,- 9. Territorial expansion as one of the mechanisms for growing damage from natural disasters.