Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
It would have been equally possible to examine other
characteristics of the system that have played and still play a
fundamental role in its evolution and regulations. Would life have
existed without the magnetosphere protecting the Earth's surface from
the Sun's ionizing radiation? What would the climate be like without
the stability of the Earth's oblique axis of rotation, due to the
existence of the Earth-Moon duo? How is the regulation of oceanic
photosynthesis modulated by other nutritive elements, such as iron
[PIC 09]?
But, of course, it requires more than a chapter, more than an entire
topic, to describe these phenomena in all their diversity and
complexity. Interested readers will be able to find something to satisfy
their curiosity in different individual or collected volumes [BER 07,
BER 08, GAR 06, GAR 11, GAR 12, REI 06].
Figure 1.6.
The Earth system as it has functioned since the massive
colonization of the ocean by photosynthetic life forms producing oxygen,
that is to say for more than 2.5 billion years (see color section)
