Definition
The impact of an extraterrestrial object (either an asteroid or comet) with the Earth’s surface.
Introduction
There are now over 170 asteroid and comet impact craters that have been identified on the surface of the Earth (Table 1). These craters represent a small subset of the total impacts that have occurred during the history of life. Today, impact craters probably represent something on the order of 50,000 km2of Earth’s surface. Although this is a small habitat area, impacts are the only extraterrestrial mechanism capable of causing localized ecological disturbance. Because impacts are a mechanism capable of delivering a pulse of energy into ecosystems, from a geobiological point of view they present an important addition to the overall picture of how ecosystems are disturbed and how they recover through time. Comparison to other processes involving ecological disturbance and recovery including volcanism, glaciation/deglaciation, storm damage, fire, landslides, and...
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Cockell, C.S. (2011). Asteroid and Comet Impacts. In: Reitner, J., Thiel, V. (eds) Encyclopedia of Geobiology. Encyclopedia of Earth Sciences Series. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-9212-1_117
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