Abstract
The biosphere has greatly shaped the past evolution of the Earth system. Here I argue that life evolved to maximize planetary entropy production. The evolution of the Earth system through time has thus evolved as far away from thermodynamic equilibrium as possible. I describe the implications of this hypothesis for the evolution of the global cycles of water and carbon and the implied consequences for biospheric evolution. This thermodynamic perspective of Earth’s biospheric evolution extends the views of Vernadski and Lovelock and puts it on a quantitative foundation.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
R. J. Charlson, J. E. Lovelock, M. O. Andreae, and S. G. Warren, “Oceanic Phytoplankton, Atmospheric Sulfur, Cloud Albedo, and Climate,” Nature 326, 655–661 (1987).
C. Goldblatt, T. M. Lenton, and A. J. Watson, “Bistability of Atmospheric Oxygen and the Great Oxidation,” Nature 443, 683–686 (2006).
H. H. Holland, “The Oxygenation of the Atmosphere and Oceans,” Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B 361, 903–915 (2006).
IPCC: Climate Change 2001: The Scientific Basis. Contribution of Working Group I to the Third Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (Cambridge Univ. Press, Cambridge, 2001).
J. W. Kirchner, “The Gaia Hypothesis: Can It Be Tested?,” Rev. Geophys. 27, 223–235 (1989).
A. Kleidon, Beyond Gaia: Thermodynamics of Life and Earth system functioning, Clim. Ch. 66: 271–319 (2004).
A. Kleidon and K. Fraedrich, “Biotic Entropy Production and Global Atmosphere-Biosphere Interactions,” in Non-equilibrium Thermodynamics and the Production of Entropy: Life, Earth, and beyond, Ed. by A. Kleidon and R. D. Lorenz (Springer, Heidelberg, 2005), pp. 173–190.
A. Kleidon and R. D. Lorenz, Non-equilibrium Thermodynamics and the Production of Entropy: Life, Earth, and beyond (Springer, Heidelberg, 2005).
D. K. Kondepudi and I. Prigogine, Modern Thermodynamics: From Heat Engines to Dissipative Structures (Wiley, Chichester, 1998).
T. M. Lenton, H. J. Schellnhuber, and E. Szathmary, “Climbing the Co-evolution Ladder,” Nature 431, 913 (2004).
J. E. Lovelock, “A Physical Basis for Life Detection Experiments,” Nature 207, 568–570 (1965).
J. E. Lovelock, Gaia: A New Look at Life on Earth (Oxford Univ. Press, Oxford, 1972).
J. E. Lovelock and L. Margulis, “Atmospheric Homeostasis by and for the Biosphere: the Gaia Hypothesis,” Tellus 26, 1–10 (1974).
W. Martin and M. J. Russell, “On the Origin of Cells: A Hypothesis for the Evolutionary Transitions from Abiotic Geochemistry to Chemoautotrophic Prokaryotes, and from Prokaryotes to Nucleated Cells,” Phil. Trans. R. Soc. Lond. B 358, 59–85 (2003).
K. J. Niklas, B. H. Tiffney, and A. H. Knoll, “Patterns in Vascular Land Plant Diversification,” Nature 303, 614–616 (1983).
H. Ozawa, A. Ohmura, R. D. Lorenz, and T. Pujol, “The Second Law of Thermodynamics and the Global Climate System—A Review of the Maximum Entropy Production Principle,” Rev. Geophys. 41, 1018 (2003).
A. Pavlov, J. F. Kasting, L. L. Brown, et al., “Greenhouse Warming by CH4 in the Atmosphere of Early Earth,” J. Geophys. Res. 105, 11981–11990 (2000).
A. J. Ridgwell, M. J. Kennedy, and K. Caldeira, “Carbonate Deposition, Climate Stability, and Neoproterozoic Ice Ages,” Science 302, 859–862 (2003).
D. W. Schwartzman, Life, Temperature, and the Earth: The Self-Organizing Biosphere (Columbia Univ. Press, New York, 1999).
D. W. Schwartzman and T. Volk, “Biotic Enhancement of Weathering and the Habitability of Earth,” Nature 340 457–460 (1989).
J. J. Sepkoski Jr, R. K. Bambach, D. M. Raup, and J. W. Valentine, “Phanerozoic Marine Diversity and the Fossil Record,” Nature 293, 435–437 (1981).
G. E. Shaw, “Bio-controlled Thermostasis Involving the Sulfur Cycle,” Clim. Ch. 5, 297–303 (1983).
V. I. Vernadsky, Biosphere (Nauka, Leningrad, 1926) [in Russian] (translated and reprinted in 1998, Springer Verlag, New York).
A. I. Zotin, “Bioenergetic Trends of Evolutionary Progress of Organisms,” in Thermodynamics and Regulation of Biological Processes, Ed. by I. Lamprecht and A.I. Zotin (de Gruyter, Berlin-New York, 1984), pp. 451–458.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Kleidon, A. Maximum entropy production and general trends in biospheric evolution. Paleontol. J. 43, 980–985 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1134/S0031030109080164
Received:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1134/S0031030109080164