Characterizing Modern Microbialites and The Geobiological Processes Underlying Their Formation

Characterizing Modern Microbialites and The Geobiological Processes Underlying Their Formation PDF Author: Jamie S. Foster
Publisher: Frontiers Media SA
ISBN: 2889632520
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 210

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Book Description

Characterizing Modern Microbialites and The Geobiological Processes Underlying Their Formation

Characterizing Modern Microbialites and The Geobiological Processes Underlying Their Formation PDF Author: Jamie S. Foster
Publisher: Frontiers Media SA
ISBN: 2889632520
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 210

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Book Description


Astrobiology and Cuatro Ciénegas Basin as an Analog of Early Earth

Astrobiology and Cuatro Ciénegas Basin as an Analog of Early Earth PDF Author: Valeria Souza
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3030460878
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 237

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Book Description
Astrobiology not only investigates how early life took hold of our planet but also life on other planets – both in our Solar System and beyond – and their potential for habitability. The book take readers from the scars on planetary surfaces made by space rocks to the history of the Solar System narrated by those space rocks as well as exoplanets in other planetary systems. But the true question is how life arose here or elsewhere. Modern comparative genomics has revealed that Darwin was correct; a set of highly conserved genes and cellular functions indicate that all life is related by common ancestry. The Last Universal Common Ancestor or LUCA sits at the base of the Tree of Life. However, once that life took hold, it started to diversify and form complex microbial communities that are known as microbial mats and stromatolites. Due to their long evolutionary history and abundance on modern Earth, research on the biological, chemical and geological processes of stromatolite formation has provided important insights into the field of astrobiology. Many of these microbialite-containing ecosystems have been used as models for astrobiology, and NASA mission analogs including Shark Bay, Pavilion and Kelly Lakes. Modern microbialites represent natural laboratories to study primordial ecosystems and provide proxies for how life could evolve on other planets. However, few viral metagenomic studies (i.e., viromes) have been conducted in microbialites, which are not only an important part of the community but also mirror its biodiversity. This book focuses on particularly interesting sites such as Andean lake microbialites, a proxy of early life since they are characterized by very high UV light, while Alchichica and Bacalar lakes are characterized by high-salt and oligotrophic waters that nurture stromatolites. However, it is only the oasis of Cuatro Ciénegas Basin in México that stored past life in its marine sediments of the Sierra de San Marcos. This particular Sierra has a magmatic pouch that moves the deep aquifer to the surface in a cycle of sun drenched life and back to the depths of the magmatic life in an ancient cycle that now is broken by the overexploitation of the surface water as well as the deep aquifer in order to irrigate alfalfa in the desert. The anthropocene, the era of human folly, is killing this unique time machine and with it the memory of the planet.

Advances in Stromatolite Geobiology

Advances in Stromatolite Geobiology PDF Author: Joachim Reitner
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 3642104142
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 553

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Book Description
Stromatolites are the most intriguing geobiological structures of the entire earth history since the beginning of the fossil record in the Archaean. Stromatolites and microbialites are interpreted as biosedimentological remains of biofilms and microbial mats. These structures are important environmental and evolutionary archives which give us information about ancient habitats, biodiversity, and evolution of complex benthic ecosystems. However, many geobiological aspects of these structures are still unknown or only poorly understood. The present proceedings highlight the new ideas and information on the formation and environmental setting of stromatolites presented at the occasion of the Kalkowsky Symposium 2008, held in Göttingen, Germany.

Ehrlich's Geomicrobiology

Ehrlich's Geomicrobiology PDF Author: Henry Lutz Ehrlich
Publisher: CRC Press
ISBN: 1466592419
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 643

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Book Description
Advances in geomicrobiology have progressed at an accelerated pace in recent years. Ehrlich's Geomicrobiology, Sixth Edition surveys various aspects of the field, including the microbial role in elemental cycling and in the formation and degradation of minerals and fossil fuels. Unlike the fifth edition, the sixth includes many expert contributors

Ecology of Cyanobacteria II

Ecology of Cyanobacteria II PDF Author: Brian A. Whitton
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 9400738552
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 753

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Book Description
Cyanobacteria have existed for 3.5 billion years, yet they are still the most important photosynthetic organisms on the planet for cycling carbon and nitrogen. The ecosystems where they have key roles range from the warmer oceans to many Antarctic sites. They also include dense nuisance growths in nutrient-rich lakes and nitrogen-fixers which aid the fertility of rice-fields and many soils, especially the biological soil crusts of arid regions. Molecular biology has in recent years provided major advances in our understanding of cyanobacterial ecology. Perhaps for more than any other group of organisms, it is possible to see how the ecology, physiology, biochemistry, ultrastructure and molecular biology interact. This all helps to deal with practical problems such as the control of nuisance blooms and the use of cyanobacterial inocula to manage semi-desert soils. Large-scale culture of several organisms, especially "Spirulina" (Arthrospira), for health food and specialist products is increasingly being expanded for a much wider range of uses. In view of their probable contribution to past oil deposits, much attention is currently focused on their potential as a source of biofuel. Please visit http://extras.springer.com/ to view Extra Materials belonging to this volume. This book complements the highly successful Ecology of Cyanobacteria and integrates the discoveries of the past twelve years with the older literature.

Encyclopedia of Geobiology

Encyclopedia of Geobiology PDF Author: Joachim Reitner
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 9781402092138
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 927

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Book Description
The interplay between Geology and Biology has shaped the Earth from the early Precambrian, 4 billion years ago. Moving beyond the borders of the classical core disciplines, Geobiology strives to identify chains of cause-and-effect and synergisms between the geo- and the biospheres that have been driving the evolution of life in modern and ancient environments. Combining modern methods, geobiological information can be extracted not only from visible remains of organisms, but also from organic molecules, rock fabrics, minerals, isotopes and other tracers. An understanding of these processes and their signatures reveals enormous applied potentials with respect to issues of environment protection, public health, energy and resource management. The Encyclopedia of Geobiology has been designed to act as a key reference for students, researchers, teachers, and the informed public and to provide basic, but comprehensible knowledge on this rapidly expanding discipline that sits at the interface between modern geo- and biosciences.

Fundamentals of Geobiology

Fundamentals of Geobiology PDF Author: Andrew H. Knoll
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1118280881
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 876

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Book Description
2012 PROSE Award, Earth Science: Honorable Mention For more than fifty years scientists have been concerned with the interrelationships of Earth and life. Over the past decade, however, geobiology, the name given to this interdisciplinary endeavour, has emerged as an exciting and rapidly expanding field, fuelled by advances in molecular phylogeny, a new microbial ecology made possible by the molecular revolution, increasingly sophisticated new techniques for imaging and determining chemical compositions of solids on nanometer scales, the development of non-traditional stable isotope analyses, Earth systems science and Earth system history, and accelerating exploration of other planets within and beyond our solar system. Geobiology has many faces: there is the microbial weathering of minerals, bacterial and skeletal biomineralization, the roles of autotrophic and heterotrophic metabolisms in elemental cycling, the redox history in the oceans and its relationship to evolution and the origin of life itself.. This book is the first to set out a coherent set of principles that underpin geobiology, and will act as a foundational text that will speed the dissemination of those principles. The chapters have been carefully chosen to provide intellectually rich but concise summaries of key topics, and each has been written by one or more of the leading scientists in that field.. Fundamentals of Geobiology is aimed at advanced undergraduates and graduates in the Earth and biological sciences, and to the growing number of scientists worldwide who have an interest in this burgeoning new discipline. Additional resources for this book can be found at: http://www.wiley.com/go/knoll/geobiology.

Stratigraphy and Paleolimnology of the Green River Formation, Western USA

Stratigraphy and Paleolimnology of the Green River Formation, Western USA PDF Author: Michael Elliot Smith
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 9401799067
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 359

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Book Description
This volume presents a suite of detailed stratigraphic and sedimentologic investigations of the Eocene Green River Formation of Wyoming, Colorado and Utah, one of the world’s foremost terrestrial archives of lacustrine and alluvial deposition during the warmest portion of the early Cenozoic. Its twelve chapters encompass the rich and varied record of lacustrine stratigraphy, sedimentology, geochronology, geochemistry and paleontology. Chapters 2-9 provide detailed member-scale synthesis of Green River Formation strata within the Greater Green River, Fossil, Piceance Creek and Uinta Basins, while its final two chapters address its enigmatic evaporite deposits and ichnofossils at broad, interbasinal scale.

Psychrophiles: From Biodiversity to Biotechnology

Psychrophiles: From Biodiversity to Biotechnology PDF Author: Rosa Margesin
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3319570579
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 685

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Book Description
Cold adaptation includes a complex range of structural and functional adaptations at the level of all cellular constituents, and these adaptations render cold-adapted organisms particularly useful for biotechnological applications. This book presents the most recent knowledge of (i) boundary conditions for microbial life in the cold, (ii) microbial diversity in various cold ecosystems, (iii) molecular cold adaptation mechanisms and (iv) the resulting biotechnological perspectives.

Carbonate Mud-Mounds

Carbonate Mud-Mounds PDF Author: C. L. V. Monty
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1444304127
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 544

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Book Description
This is the first book to investigate the structure, origin and evolution of carbonate mud-mounds. Mud-mounds are accumulations of biogenic carbonate sediment that are common in the geological record, and economically important as they host lead zinc mineralization and oil and gas. The book reviews, for the first time, the different mechanisms of mud-mound formation and examines in detail the major changes in mud-mound type and occurrence through geological time. The major part of the book contains case studies of mud-mounds from the Palaeozoic, Mesozoic and Cenozoic. The coverage is global and truly international, with 32 authors from 10 countries. The first volume to deal with the structure, formation and evolution of mud-mounds. Copiously illustrated, with nine colour plates. If you are a member of the International Association of Sedimentologists, for purchasing details, please see: http://www.iasnet.org/publications/details.asp?code=SP23