Definition
The biosphere is defined either as “the place on Earth’s surface where life dwells” (Eduard Suess’ original definition, 1875, in The Origin of the Alps), meaning the zone on Earth where life naturally occurs, or in a more narrow sense as just the organisms themselves. Recent advances in microbiology have demonstrated that microorganisms live deep beneath the Earth’s terrestrial surface and that the total mass of microbial life may, in biomass, exceed all animal and plant life on the surface (Whitman et al., 1998). Microorganisms live at such extremes that the “thickness” of the biosphere extends from 5,400 m above sea level to at least 9,000 m below sea level.
Salt deposits are accumulations of solid materials and are usually derived from evaporation of seawater. There are >70 elements dissolved in extant seawater, but only 6 ions make up >99% of all the dissolved salts (wt% in brackets): Na+ (30.51), Cl− (55.08), SO4 2− (7.69), Mg2+ (3.67), Ca2+ (1.17), K+(1.10) (Hay et...
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Stan-Lotter, H., Fendrihan, S. (2011). Deep Biosphere of Salt Deposits . 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_67
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