Ecology: Biology of Interaction. II-01. Biosphere
The biosphere is Earth’s shell transformed by the activity of living organisms. An alternative interpretation (biosphere as the shell of Earth within which living organisms occur, the “field of life existence” in V. I. Vernadsky’s terms) is much less useful. V. I. Vernadsky introduced understanding of the biosphere as a transforming force.
“All living matter appears before us as one whole, as one immense organism that borrows its elements from the reservoir of inorganic nature, purposefully controls all processes of its progressive and regressive metamorphosis, and finally returns everything borrowed back to dead nature.”
S. M. Vinogradsky, 1896
The word “biosphere” is among the most frequently used terms in modern science. How does this relate to the fact that it is used in different senses?
It is generally recognized that Vladimir Ivanovich Vernadsky was the founder of biospherology. Both Ukraine and Russia take pride in him: he was born and died in Russia, lived part of his life in Ukraine, and became the first president of the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences established under Hetman Skoropadsky. Incidentally, during part of his childhood Vernadsky studied at a classical gymnasium in Kharkiv.
The concept of “biosphere” was not introduced by Vernadsky. It was brought into broad scientific circulation in 1875 by Austrian geologist Eduard Suess in work devoted to Alpine geology. Even before Suess, Jean-Baptiste Lamarck discussed what later received this name.
In this course, the biosphere is treated not merely as the area where life is present, but as a planetary system transformed by life itself. This interpretation is more productive for ecological analysis because it highlights feedbacks between living matter and geochemical cycles, atmosphere composition, lithosphere transformation, and long-term regulation of Earth-system processes.