Long Term Coevolution of Life and the Planet Programme
Throughout the history of our planet
there have been major reorganisations of the whole Earth system. One might argue that we are in the middle of such a revolution right now, as we face the consequences of society's impact on climate, environment and biodiversity. In the absence of human interference, the driving forces behind these changes, and the controls on the
intervening periods of relative stability, involve long term biogeochemical feedbacks that science is still struggling to comprehend. We know that dynamic interactions between tectonics, nutrient cycles and the living world have together regulated Earth's surface conditions over geological time. Therefore, an integrated approach combining the skills of geologists, geochemists, biologists and system modellers is increasingly being sought to better understand how perturbations to the chemical composition of the
atmosphere and oceans relate to Earth system evolution and
biodiversity.
At certain times in the geological past, global scale disturbances of the carbon and oxygen cycles have taken place resulting in, for example, the spread of anoxia into the shallow marine realm and biological crises. Deeper in geological time, the Earth's surface was even fully anaerobic, evolving from a simple, microbial world to a more complex, aerobic one, dominated by oxygen and multicellular life forms such as ourselves. This programme aims to improve the understanding of the nature, rates, controls and feedbacks that provide the fundamental drivers and controls of these changes within the Earth System through four large interdisciplinary research projects.
At certain times in the geological past, global scale disturbances of the carbon and oxygen cycles have taken place resulting in, for example, the spread of anoxia into the shallow marine realm and biological crises. Deeper in geological time, the Earth's surface was even fully anaerobic, evolving from a simple, microbial world to a more complex, aerobic one, dominated by oxygen and multicellular life forms such as ourselves. This programme aims to improve the understanding of the nature, rates, controls and feedbacks that provide the fundamental drivers and controls of these changes within the Earth System through four large interdisciplinary research projects.
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The
programme aims to improve current knowledge of the interactions between the
evolution of life and the Earth, which represents one of the three high
level challenges within NERC's Earth system science theme.
Annual programme meetings, annual short courses and large conferences form part of this programme's efforts to maximise public and peer understanding of this important topic. Project studentships represent an important part of this initiative. The opportunities for graduate students to both broaden and deepen their skills will be exploited by a programme of short courses provided by expert groups within the projects, as well as via existing arrangements such as the Earth system science summer school. Our motto is the 'past is the key to the present'. By studying revolutions in Earth's past, we hope to better understand the role we are playing today in driving possibly irreversible changes in our planet's environment and biodiversity. |
Photo by: Y Shields-Zhou
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