Geology Reference
In-Depth Information
('To 'phosphorus weathering'): Your roots dig deep down into the granite, crack-
ing open the rock, breathing out carbon dioxide that combines with water molec-
ules stored away from rains long past. The carbonic acid that results from this
union dissolves the granite, releasing a host of long-incarcerated chemical be-
ings, including precious phosphorus. But the fires have killed so many trees that
now the forest as a whole liberates only small amounts of this rare element from
the rocks.
(To 'phosphorus to land'): You become a rare phosphate ion freshly weathered
from the granite by the great Jarrah tree. Rain washes you into the sparse soil,
but there are no other phosphate ions near you. You are quite alone.
(To 'organic carbon burial on land'): You become the great wild being of the en-
tire Jarrah forest, extending over 3.9 million hectares of south-western Australia,
a great network of trees and plants connected by thin threads of underground
fungi. But in the phosphoruspoor conditions very few of your plants grow well,
and most are small and stunted. There is less photosynthesis, and so your soils
bury far less dead plant material.
(To 'oxygen in the air'): Completing the journey, you once again take the form of
an oxygen molecule in the air. Organic carbon burial on land has decreased so
much that there are hardly any new oxygen brothers in the air to replenish those
that have combined with so many oxygen-hungry chemical beings. The journey
you have just completed has diminished oxygen in the air, averting a catastrophic
global wildfire.
Now quickly travel around the journey once more to experience how it springs in-
to action to avert another danger—the loss of too much oxygen.
You become Gaia. Now, with less oxygen in the air there are fewer fires, and you
feel the land vegetation growing lush and green once more over your land sur-
faces. Plant roots weather huge amounts of phosphorus from the rocks, and your
plant cover grows even more. As the burial of dead plants continues apace in the
phosphorus-rich world, you taste the tangy legions of oxygen molecules increas-
ing in your atmosphere.
