Scope and Purpose of This Volume

Abstract

Some commonplace ideas of our time are that the surface of the earth is occupied by a film of living organisms, the “biosphere”; that the life of man and all other heterotrophic organisms is dependent on the primary production of the biosphere; and that the growth of man’s population and industry affects the biosphere with increasing pressures, particularly those of harvest and chemical influence. These ideas are familiar, but some of the quantitative characteristics of the biosphere and man’s relationship to it are not. Only in the last decade have sufficient data become available so that productive dimensions of the biosphere can be characterized by something better than educated guesses. Only in the last two or three decades has the unstable character of man’s relationship to the biosphere become apparent to more than a small circle of scholars.