Principles of spatial organization and evolution of the biosphere and the noosphere

In his last lifetime essay, “A Few Words about the Noosphere”, Academician V.I. Vernadsky (1944) wrote that all living organisms on the planet, including man, are integral to the biosphere of the Earth, its material and energy structure and cannot be physically independent of it even for a minute. However, the substrate that generates all living beings and is no less tightly bound to the biosphere has always been characterized by a significant geochemical heterogeneity, traced both in the vertical and in the lateral structure of all geospheres.

The present work is devoted to three most important aspects of modern geochemistry and biogeochemistry:

On the basis of theoretical concepts of biogeochemistry and geochemical ecology, formulated in the works of V.I. Vernadsky, A.P. Vinogradov, A.E. Fersman, B.B. Polynov, A.I. Perel’man, M.A. Glazovskaya, V.V. Kovalsky, E. Odum, B. Commoner, E.I. Kolchinskii and others, the author puts forward a hypothesis that there exist two qualitatively different stages in the evolution of the biosphere.

The first stage is recognized as the period of natural evolution of the biosphere during which it evolves successively into a more complex and more biogeochemically specialized object. In the course of the geological time, this constantly results, on the one hand, in an increase in species diversity and the perfection of individual species, and, on the other hand, to directed improvement and a greater differentiation of the geochemical conditions of the environment. At this stage, the evolution of all systems of the biosphere that were controlled by the mechanisms of self-organization and self-regulation resulted in the establishment of a dynamic equilibrium, which was responsible for the cycling of all essential chemical elements and therefore providing ecologically optimal geochemical conditions in all ecological niches and for all species and biocenoses inhabiting the biosphere at any given moment.

The beginning of the second stage is related to the appearance of reason and qualitative changes in the biosphere caused by the goal-directed activity of the human mind, as an entirely new geological force that appeared to be able not only to disrupt the functioning of natural mechanisms of self-regulation and selforganization, but also to transform the environment in the intersts of a single biological species, Homo sapiens. A direct consequence of this change was the uncontrolled transformation of the natural environment, during which the primary structure (geochemical background) created in the course of billions of years was eventually superimposed by a qualitatively new layer of anthropogenically-derived chemical elements and compounds, thus building an interference pattern of a new geochemical field with which practically all modern living organisms are now forced to interact.

An outstanding feature of the new evolutionary stage of the natural environment, called by Vernadsky the noosphere, is that biogeochemical changes at this stage proceed at a rate which exceeds that required for the living matter to adapt to these changes. The result is the disruption of the existing parameters of the biological cycle, leading to the emergence of a significant number of endemic diseases of geochemical nature.

The proposed approach was used to prove the anthropogenic genesis of existing geochemical endemic diseases and explain the mechanisms of their appearance. In addition, this approach allowed us to develop a new methodology for mapping zones of ecological and geochemical risk and noticeably simplify the procedure of monitoring distribution and prevention of all diseases of geochemical nature.