Stable Isotopes And Biosphere-Atmosphere Interactions Processes And Biological Controls

Our world is dramatically threatened by changes in the environment, particularly those increasingly affecting the composition of the atmosphere. The shifting concentrations of the major greenhouse gasses - carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide - and the associated alterations in climate are having a profound effect on biological diversity, and not to the good. The emerging multidisciplinary field of Earth System Science sets out to improve our understanding of the functioning of ecosystems, at a global level across the entire planet. This book looks to one of its most powerful tools - the application of stable isotope analyses - to understanding biosphere-atmosphere exchange of the greenhouse gases, and synthesizes much of the recent progress in this work. Stable isotope effects, caused by enzymes during physiological processes such as photosynthesis or respiration, have been studied in test tubes or leaf gas-exchange chambers under controlled conditions for some time past. Now models of these processes can be used on a larger, global scale. The relatively closed atmosphere-biosphere system allows the operation of enzymatic processes to be observed through measures of the spatial and temporal gradients in the concentration and stable isotope composition of atmospheric CO[subscript 2], CH[subscript 4] and N[subscript 2]O, mimicking the observations made in small chamber experiments.Flanagan, Lawrence B. is the author of 'Stable Isotopes And Biosphere-Atmosphere Interactions Processes And Biological Controls', published 2005 under ISBN 9780120884476 and ISBN 012088447X.