Marine Biogeochemical Cycles - Ocean in the Earth System - page 147

for O and H in seawater are much lower than those given here because
the authors did not take into account the large amounts of these two
elements present in H 2 O molecules.
Biogeochemistry is the area of geochemistry that focuses on the
effects of living organisms on the concentrations of chemical elements
in the different natural reservoirs of the Earth and on the cycles of
chemical elements between reservoirs. During the last few years, the
concept of biogeochemistry has widened and is now often referred to
as “biogeosciences”, which focus on the interactions between the
biological, chemical and physical processes in terrestrial or
extraterrestrial life with the geosphere, hydrosphere and atmosphere
(this definition is from the scientific journal Biogeosciences , published
by the scientific society European Geosciences Union ).
4.1.2. Biogeochemistry and marine biogeochemistry
The origin of the word “biogeochemistry” is interesting. An article
on the history of biogeochemistry [GOR 91] reports that this word
was used for the first time by the scientist Vernadsky (Figure 4.1) in
his topic Biosfera , published in Russian in 1926 [VER 26]. However,
the author of the article had only seen an abbreviated English
translation of this work, entitled The Biosphere , which was published
in the United States in 1986 [VER 86]. Actually, Vernadsky translated
his own Russian topic into French in 1929, with the title La Biosphère
[VER 29], which included both a translation (with additional
contributions from the author) of the Russian topic of 1926 and, in a
second part, a translation of an oral communication he had presented
in 1928 at the Society of Naturalists of Leningrad (now called St
Petersburg). It must be noted that the terms “ biogéochimie ”
(biogeochemistry) or “ biogéochimique ” (biogeochemical) do not
appear in the French translation of the 1926 Russian topic (pages 1-
201 of the 1929 work), indicating that the author did not use these
words in 1926, whereas the adjective “ biogéochimique ” is used
several times in the translation of the oral communication of 1928
(pages 203-230 of the 1929 work). Hence the term “ biogéochimique ”
was published for the first time in 1929, in the French language topic