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Harvesting the Biosphere - 9780262018562

Un libro in lingua di Vaclav Smil edito da Mit Pr, 2012

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The biosphere -- the Earth's thin layer of life -- dates from nearly four billionyears ago, when the first simple organisms appeared. Many species have exerted enormous influence onthe biosphere's character and productivity, but none has transformed the Earth in so many ways andon such a scale as Homo sapiens. In Harvesting the Biosphere,Vaclav Smil offers an interdisciplinary and quantitative account of human claims on the biosphere'sstores of living matter, from prehistory to the present day. Smil examines all harvests -- fromprehistoric man's hunting of megafauna to modern crop production -- and all uses of harvestedbiomass, including energy, food, and raw materials. Without harvesting of the biomass, Smil pointsout, there would be no story of human evolution and advancing civilization; but at the same time,the increasing extent and intensity of present-day biomass harvests are changing the veryfoundations of civilization's well-being.

In his detailed and comprehensiveaccount, Smil presents the best possible quantifications of past and current global losses in orderto assess the evolution and extent of biomass harvests. Drawing on the latest work in disciplinesranging from anthropology to environmental science, Smil offers a valuable long-term, planet-wideperspective on human-caused environmental change.

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