Product Description

For courses in Earth Systems Science offered in departments of Geology, Earth Science, Geography and Environmental Science. The first textbook of its kind that addresses the issues of global change from a true Earth systems perspective, The Earth System offers a solid emphasis on lessons from Earth's history that may guide decision-making in the future. The text is more quantitative than the standard Earth science book, but the authors have remained sensitive to the needs of non-science majors.

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Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #218257 in Books
• Published on: 2003-08-16
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 432 pages

Book Info
Introduces the concepts needed to begin study of the discipline of Earth system science. Devoted to understanding the ways in which carbon, in various forms, is cycled back and forth between the atmosphere, oceans, solid Earth, and the biota. Softcover.

From the Inside Flap

This is not a traditional Earth science textbook. Such books treat individual components of the Earth system—the solid Earth, atmosphere, and oceans—separately, with little consideration of the interplay among them or the important interactions with living organisms (the stuff of ecology texts). And, although they are the focus of this book, the modern environmental problems of global warming, ozone depletion, and loss of biodiversity are treated in a fundamentally different way here than in most texts. Here we recognize that these problems have analogues from Earth history: The geological past is the key to the present and to the future.

Content

Chapter 1, "Global Change," is an overview of these important issues—the observational data that convince us that serious problems exist and the events in Earth's history that illuminate how the Earth system responds under stress. The rest of the book is organized into three major sections. Chapters 2 through 9 are devoted to an exploration of how Earth "works." They develop the notion that processes active on Earth's surface are functioning together to regulate climate, the circulation of the ocean and atmosphere, and the recycling of the elements. The biota play an important role in all of these processes. Chapters 10 through 15 take the reader through the history of Earth, highlighting those events that provide lessons for the future. The final four chapters focus on the future of the Earth system, addressing the modern problems of global change and the prospect of life on other planets in the context of what was presented in the first two sections.

Revisions to the First Edition

In the four years since the first edition of this book came out, a lot has changed. Atmospheric CO2 has increased by about 7 parts per million, freon-11 concentrations have decreased by 6 parts per trillion, and global surface temperatures have continued their inexorable but ragged rise. For this reason alone—just to keep up with the new data on global change—a book like this one needs to be regularly updated. However, it is not just the data that are changing. Ideas have been evolving as well during the past four years. New geologic evidence indicates that "Snowball Earth" episodes actually occurred not just once but several times during Earth's history. The case has been made that CH4, rather than (or in addition to) CO2, was the main greenhouse gas that helped to keep the early Earth warm despite reduced solar luminosity. The IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) released a new report that for the first time states unambiguously that human activities are responsible for at least part of the observed surface temperature increase. And NASA's generous support for the new discipline of "astrobiology" has made us even more aware of the tight connections between the evolving Earth and its biota.

We have tried to reflect these and other changes in the revised edition of our book. We have added two new chapters: Chapter 6 (on global climate models) and Chapter 9 (on the biota, ecosystems, and biodiversity). We've also expanded our discussion of early Earth, now devoting two chapters to the topic: Chapter 10, on the origin of Earth and of life, and Chapter 11, on the effect life has had on the development of the atmosphere. Some of this involved simply reorganizing material that had previously been included in other chapters; however, a significant amount of new material has been added. Chapter 9 recognizes the importance of numerical modeling in the establishment of policy for a changing world. Chapter 9 highlights the role that the biota plays in the Earth system. Chapters 10 and 11 draw on the "universal" tree of life derived from sequencing of ribosomal RNA that places humans and fungi as closer relatives than different forms of bacteria. The order of Chapters 11 and 12 (Chapters 8 and 9 in the first edition) has been switched to reflect the increased importance of the O2/CH4 story for Precambrian paleoclimates.

Organization and Pedagogy

As in the first edition, we have employed a number of pedagogical features to assist in the learning process. Each chapter begins with "Key Questions" (objective questions students should be able to answer after they have read the chapter) and a "Chapter Overview" (a broad preview of the chapter to come). Within each chapter are boxed essays that provide interesting asides, more detailed or quantitative treatments of material in the text, or recent advances in scientific understanding. A "Chapter Summary" is provided in outline form at the end of each chapter to aid in reviewing the most important concepts. "Suggested Readings" include both general readings and advanced readings for students (and instructors) interested in further information about the subject matter. These are followed by "Key Terms" lists, which consist of boldfaced terms that are introduced in the chapter and that appear in the "Glossary" in the back of the book. "Review Questions" focus students' review on important concepts and require only brief answers, whereas "Critical-Thinking Questions" are thought questions or analytical exercises that require students to synthesize concepts presented in the chapter. In designing this second edition, we have tried to organize our topics more logically and categorize special topics into "boxes" of different types, with the designations A Closer Look, which offers a closer examination of topics discussed in the book; Important Concepts, with in-depth presentations of fundamental concepts from the natural sciences essential to our understanding of the Earth system; and Thinking Quantitatively, which emphasizes how mathematics is used to better understand the workings of the Earth system. Instructors may choose whether to make any or all of these boxes assigned reading. We have also corrected errors pointed out to us by our students and by other faculty using the book, and we've brought the data graphs up to date. We hope that these changes will help make the book easier to use in a variety of different courses, as well as being more accessible and informative to students.

Chapter Sequencing

We anticipate that this book will be used in a variety of ways. We teach a general education class at The Pennsylvania State University that covers approximately three-quarters of the book during one semester. Several instructors teach this course, but not all of us choose to cover the same chapters. An instructor who is most interested in climate issues, for example, might use Chapters 1-6, 8 12, 14-16, and 19. One who is most interested in biodiversity might choose Chapters 1, 2, 8-11, 13, ant 18. The course can also be tailored to emphasize either Earth history (Chapters 1, 2, 3, and 9-15) or modern global environmental problems (Chapters 1-6, 8, 9, and 16-19"' By providing more material than can easily be covered ii a one-semester course, we provide the flexibility to emphasize topics or topic areas that are of interest to different instructors and different groups of students.

From the Back Cover

The Earth System, Second Edition employs a systems-based approach to examine Earth science at the global level. This text explores how:

• Earth's processes have connections to the past and to each other
• Seemingly small-scale changes to Earth can have large-scale effects
• Processes that are occurring now are molding the course of the future

The second edition incorporates two new chapters:

• Modeling the Atmosphere-Ocean System—A discussion of why numerical models are necessary, how they are used, what they can tell us about past and future climates, and what their limitations are.
• A Focus on the Biota: Ecosystems and Biodiversity—Focuses on life's role in the Earth system, how ecosystems function, what biodiversity is, and whether or not biological diversity enhances the stability of ecosystems.

Three categories of boxed text are included and offer a deeper study of the topics presented.

• A Closer Look—Includes more advanced concepts, results from current research, and explanations of interesting phenomena.
• Important Concepts—In-depth presentations of fundamental concepts from the natural sciences essential to our understanding of the Earth system.
• Thinking Quantitatively—Demonstrates how simple mathematics can be used to better understand the workings of the Earth system.

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Customer Reviews

This is the best textbook for earth system science
Earth System Science is a new field, one that evolves much more quickly than textbooks can be revised. This one is as current as you can expect, and it approaches the field of science in a much better way than any other textbook I have seen. In particular, most earth system texts approach the field by morphing from a traditional discipline. Usually, it's a geology textbook revised to include atmospheric, oceanic, and climatic studies. But earth system science requires an interdisciplinary approach from the start, a problem based approach. Our global environmental problems need this approach, and this book covers them in a reasonably detailed and accurate manner.

Good overview of how our earth works
I used this book for an introductory environmental studies course. The book is full of information I had never before discovered. The chapters clearly describe how smaller cycles and feedback mechanisms relate the health of the earth as a whole.

If you are curious about global warming this book has great factual information to start an understanding of the concept.

Not a bad textbook
I used this book for my Environmental Geology class. Overall I think it's an ok text. It's not as readily understandable an reader friendly as some of the other introductory geology texts on the market that I have read--it's somewhat obsecure at times. I think that it's rather overpriced as well for a black and white paperback textbook.

It does however cover a large selection of material in a succint manner, yet with enough detail to satisfy the curiosity of the interested student. Some of the stuff in this textbook is not common to geology texts--principally the aspects that have to do with the biosphere.

Overall, it's a reasonable textbook, besides the cost, which I think is inflated. Textbook prices are inflated in general in any case!