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TROPICAL RAINFORESTS: Saving What Remains
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About this site
Providing tropical forest news, statistics, photos, and information, rainforests.mongabay.com is the world's most popular rainforest site. [more] |
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Gaia Theory
The basic tenant of the Gaia theory is that life makes life possible on Earth. In other words, without the presence
of biological entities on Earth, life in the form as we know it would not exist. J.E. Lovelock argues in his work,
Gaia: A New Look At Life on Earth, that the atmosphere of our planet is highly improbable based its chemical composition.
Certain gases, like oxygen should be much rarer (less than 1% instead of 21% of atmospheric content); while other
common gases should be present. The carbon dioxide content should be 98%, making the planet an unbearable 600°F.
These conditions probably existed 3.5 billion years ago, but as life appeared, life altered these conditions. Carbon
dioxide disappeared from the atmosphere as it was extracted by life as is lived and died (oil and peat deposits).
Whether this lends credence to a supernatural being
is an unanswerable debate.
In The Future of Life E.O. Wilson describes the two versions of the Gaia theory:
The strong version holds that the biosphere is a true superorganism, with each species in it optimized to stabilize the environment and benefit from balance in the entire system, like cells of the body or workers of an ant colony . . . The strong version, however, is generally rejected by biologists, including Lovelock himself, as a working principle. The weak version, on the other hand, which holds that some species exercise widespread and even global influence, is well substantiated. Its acceptance has stimulared important new programs of research.
Wilson, E.O. The Future of Life. 2002. New York: Alfred Knopf. 11-12.
Continued: Saving rainforests
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Recent news
Amazon deforestation rate falls to lowest on record
(8/10/2007) Deforestation rates in the Brazilian Amazon for the previous year were the lowest on record, according to preliminary figures released by INPE, Brazil's National Institute of Space Research.
Lowland rainforest less diverse than previously thought
(8/9/2007) While rainforests are the world's libraries of biodiversity, species richness may be more evenly distributed in some forests than in others, reports an extensive new study by an international team of entomologists and botanists. The work, published in the current issue of the journal Nature, has important implications for forest management and conservation strategies.
Experts: parks effectively protect rainforest in Peru
(8/9/2007) High-resolution satellite monitoring of the Amazon rainforest in Peru shows that land-use and conservation policies have had a measurable impact on deforestation rates. The research is published in the August 9, 2007, on-line edition of Science Express.
More rainforest news
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