Biotic regulation of the environment

1. Русская версия: www.bioticregulation.ru/geoen.php Biotic regulation of the environment How to preserve Earth’s habitability:challenges and opportunities for global governance Victor Gorshkov, Anastassia Makarieva PNPI, St. Petersburg, Russia

2. The emerging technologiesof the past based on scientific discoveries: electrodynamics, gravitation, laws of motion, statistic mechanics. Using these discoverieshumans managed to improve their living conditions in unfavorable environments (low temperature and low biological productivity). However, the potential of these discoveries appears to have been exhausted.The highest living standards are not improving any longer. In the meantime, the environment and climate are being rapidly disrupted and degrade. Modern people are used to think high of their capacity to solve any problems. But can we stop the on-going environmental deterioration? Does this task classify as solvable in finite time?

3. The environment is rapidly degrading. But our civilization has not accumulated relevant information about the biota, the environment and the bases of their stability.

4. Flows of energy and informationfrom the Sun to the Earth’s surface F= 0бит/ceк FI/kTE~ 1038 bit/sec F= 0 bit/sec (a) Every solar photon decays into 20 thermal photons and excites 20=19 molecules – memory cells, where = (TS  TE)/TSis Carnot efficiency. Information flux F is equal to the ratio of solar energy flux I to energy kTEof thermal photon with an accuracy of 5%. (b)If the Earth were receiving same total energy flux but with Sun’s temperatureTS equal to Earth’s temperature TE, the flux of information would be zero. Life would have been impossible.

5. Stores and fluxes of information in the civilization and biosphere

6. Information value accounts for all correlations among memory cells in the considered system Memory stored in people’s memory is correlated with the semantic bases of the language. “War” and “война” have different information value for English and Russian speakers. Information in the biota is correlated with the environmental information (1024is the number of living cells in the 1mm continuous layer covering the Earth’s surface).

7. Genetic program controlling the decay channels of solar photons In the egg, without external energy consumption, the initial organic matter is transformed along a large number of decay channels as dictated by the genetic program of the species. As a result of this programmed decay the chick emerges without any external energy consumption.

8. What does the biota need such huge fluxes and stores of information for? Earth’s environment in its current state (mean global temperature 15 degrees Celcius) is geophysically unstable. There are only two physically stable states, but both of them are unfit for life: complete glaciation of Earth TE ~ –100 oС or complete evaporation of the oceans TE ~+400 oС. Life uses these information fluxes to regulate the environment keeping it habitable.This biotic regulation cannot be replicated by technology. http://www.bioticregulation.ru/tag.php?t=climate

9. Key facts about the biota Makarieva et al. 2008 Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 105: 16994-16999. 1 kgC+/ year = 1.3 W; density l.m. = 103kg/m3 ; 1 m2 1 m = 10-3m3 (1 kg l.m.)

10. Storesandfluxes of organic С+ and inorganic Сcarbon in biota and environment http://www.bioticregulation.ru/tag.php?t=carbon 1 kgC+/ (m2yr) = 1.3 W/m2

11. Contrasting ecosystem organizationon land and in the oceanBiotic regulation of the environment Unlike in the ocean, on land there is a large store of metabolically inactive biomass (wood).

12. Organization of terrestrial ecosysems:Biomass destruction by locomotive animals Animals must collect biomass production over an area exceeding their body projection area by 103by moving over this area (obligate locomotion!). Abundance: the animal takes all food locally, leaves an empty space and returns in 1-50 years when the vegetation regrows. Hurricanes and tornadoes “feeding” on water vapor act in a similar way.

13. Organization of terrestrial ecosystems:How to ensure biotic regulation and provide for ecosystem stability in the presence of big animals? To rigidly limit their consumption of ecosystem productivity!In stable ecosystems all big animals combined consume no more than 1% of primary production (this is genetically programmed via big home ranges). The humanity has surpassed this ecological quota by over an order of magnitude. In consequence, the global environment has been destabilised.

14. Biotic regulation of the water cycle on land The store of fresh water on land (mountain glaciers, lakes, rivers, soil) can leak to the ocean via river runoff in just a few years! www.bioticregulation.ru/pump To water life on land, a continuous atmospheric inflow of moisture is necessary to compensate for the river runoff. Natural forests ensure this inflow “pumping” atmospheric moisture from ocean to land.

15. Biotic pump of atmospheric moisture Over deforested areas precipitation declines exponentially over a few hundred kilometers with distance from the ocean. In contrast, forests ensure a uniform spatial distribution of rainfall over several thousand kilometers. Makarieva, Gorshkov, Li 2009 Ecological Complexity 6: 302-307. Annual precipitation P (mm/year) versus distancex (km) from the ocean over deforested areas (empty symbols) and over forests (black symbols).

16. Biotic pump of atmosphere moisture: boreal Eurasia Зимой, когда лес в спячке, осадки сконцентрированы над океаном; над сушей осадки быстро уменьшаются с запада на восток. Летом, когда лес активен и тянет влагу с океана, дожди идут преимущественно над сушей. Makarieva, Gorshkov, Li 2013 Theoretical and Applied Climatology 111: 79-96. Летом осадки не уменьшаются с удалением от океана, а остаются примерно постоянными, питая великие российские реки, на расстоянии в семь тысяч километров!

17. Forests and hurricanes compete for atmospheric water vapor No hurricanes occur between the great Amazon and Congo forests that draw water vapor inland from the ocean.More forests, fewer hurricanes! Tropical storms track (data from many years of observations)https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tropical_cyclogenesis https://forestsnews.cifor.org/51566/forests-versus-hurricanes

18. Seasonal distibution of precipitation in the Amazon and Congo basins (a), in the boreal Eurasia (b) and in the deforested Australia (c)

19. Conclusions - I • Biotic regulation can be performed by undisturbed ecosystems only if there is no abundance of matter and energy. • There is no abundance in the ocean, because the photosynthesis there is performed by unicellular phytoplankton. • On land photosynthesis is performed by forests. Here the metabolically inactive (“dead”) wood plays the role of supporting structures; its biomass exceeds phytoplankton biomass by hundreds of times. There is abundance, and that’s a problem! • Forest biomass is necessary to water land with atmospheric moisture from the ocean (biotic pump). • Being capable of removing the observed 30% carbon increment from the atmosphere in just three years, global biota is actually removing it at a lower rate (“missing carbon”). • This indicates that it is not the growing CO2 but the deforestation-induced disruption of global wind circulation and cloud regime that is responsible for the observed global warming and loss of climate stability.

20. Выводы - II • In the absence of big animals vegetation and immobile decomposers (bacteria, fungi) ensure biotic regulation at any amount of wood that is protected from the immobile decomposers. • Animals with a large body size are characterized by a live layer that exceeds the live layer of immobile life (1 mm) by a thousand of times. They cannot live on fluxes and must consumes stores of biomass moving across huge feeding areas. Such animals are incapable of biotic regulation. • The stability of the biotic pump functioning is ensured by a strict genetically programmed limitation of the productivity share allocated to large animals who are not allowed to consume more than 1% of ecosystem productivity in stable ecosystems. • Humans have globally exceeded this quota by an order of magnitude thus having caused a global environmental disruption.

21. Perspective Persistence of an environment suitable for life for any appreciable period of time is only possible as long as a substantial area on the planet's surface is occupied by natural ecosystems undisturbed by anthropogenic activities. Once the natural biotic mechanism of environmental control is destroyed, both local and global environment rapidly (over a time scale of hundreds of years) degrade to a state unfit for life, even if any direct anthropogenic environmental impact like industrial pollution is absent. A technology analogue of biotic regulation is not possible. It is therefore important to determine the necessary and sufficient global area that must be exempted from anthropogenic activities and let be occupied by natural ecosystems, so that the latter have power enough to sustain the global environment in a stable life-compatible state.