Abstract
This paper considers the needs and potentials for the development of the biosphere. An emphasis is placed on the unusual qualities of the biosphere, such as important time lags, interactions between life and its environment at large scales, and biological evolution, which has led to large scale changes in the environment during the Earth's history. These qualities require a different approach to the development of a theory for this large scale system than has been used in the past, when the biosphere was treated as a steady-state, quasilinear system. Other aspects of the development of the science of the biosphere, including the use of remote sensing, are reviewed, and the application of these techniques to the estimation of certain biological variables is discussed.
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Botkin, D.B. The science of the biosphere. Origins Life Evol Biosphere 15, 319–325 (1985). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01808176
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01808176