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The Earth's Living Matter: Biosphere and Soils

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 August 2009

Victor A. Kovda
Victor A. Kovda
Affiliation:
Scientific Adviser (formerly Founding Director), Institute of Soil Science and Photosynthesis, Russian (formerly USSR) Academy of Sciences, Pushchino, Moscow Region, Russia.
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Extract

The last three decades of the Author's research work were devoted to the Earth's soil cover both on dry land and under shallow waters. That soil cover could emerge on the Earth only after life had appeared, even though only in primitive forms. The soil cover is a product of organisms' activities and their interaction with mineral surroundings; therefore it could not appear on the Earth in the absence of living matter. If it was not for life, the soil cover would not have existed. V.I. Vernadsky always considered terrestrial soils as ‘bioinert bodies’ formed as a result of the long-term interaction of living matter and rocks (Vernadsky, 1940). According to modern theories, the Earth, like other planets of the Solar System, was formed 4–5 thousand million years ago from a thickened mass of different lifeless minerals. It could include huge asteroids and fragments of mineral rocks, big and small meteorites, and cosmic dust. Up to the present, the Earth's surface has accepted annually some 5–6 million tons of diverse cosmic dust and many meteorites of different sizes.

Type
Main Papers
Information
Environmental Conservation , Volume 20 , Issue 3 , Autumn 1993 , pp. 199 - 204
Copyright
Copyright © Foundation for Environmental Conservation 1993

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