Time for Ecosystem and Geoscientists to Hybridize their Sciences

Abstract:

Recently, Dan Yaalon and Dan Richter published the paper, “‘The Changing Model of Soil’ Revisited” to commemorate a 1961 paper written by Marlon Cline, long-time pedology professor at Cornell. Here, we argue that contemporary changes in the model of soil have several implications for the concept of ecosystem. Research findings demonstrate how the ecosystem like the soil, is far deeper than previously appreciated, is polygenetic in its development and evolution, and has become in the Anthropocene a human-natural body. Human forcings in particular have fundamentally transformed the science of soil and the ecosystem from a natural science to one that is basic and applied and more interdisciplinary, in need of active interaction with the social sciences, humanities, and the public at large. Remarkably, geoscientists have recently conceptualized an integrated system they call Earth’s Critical Zone, the human-natural system that includes solar energy, atmosphere, biota, soil, water, and the full weathering zone of the planet. We propose that the Earth’s Critical Zone is entirely compatible with Tansley’s and Lindeman’s concept of ecosystem [e.g., Tansley’s (1935) “the whole system (in the sense of physics)”], and encourage eco- and geo-scholars to get on with a needed reconciliation and hybridization of their biogeosciences.