How does life on land differ from life in the oceans? Answer: Dramatically!!
How do plants differ from animals and micro organisms, by the number and mass of species? Even more dramatically! Incredible, in fact.
This is one of the most bizarre graphs I have seen, from a book "Evolution of the Biosphere", by MM Kamshilov, translated from Russian to English by Minna Brodskaya. Mir Publishers, Moscow, 1972.
Post script: This is my first HTML hack on my blog, to include the table.
How do plants differ from animals and micro organisms, by the number and mass of species? Even more dramatically! Incredible, in fact.
This is one of the most bizarre graphs I have seen, from a book "Evolution of the Biosphere", by MM Kamshilov, translated from Russian to English by Minna Brodskaya. Mir Publishers, Moscow, 1972.
Life on Land
| Matter | Green Plants | Animals and Micro organisms |
|---|---|---|
| Tons * 10^12 | 2.4 | 0.02 |
| Percentage | 99.2 | 0.8 |
Life in Oceans
| Matter | Green Plants | Animals and Micro organisms |
|---|---|---|
| Tons * 10^12 | 0.0002 | 0.003 |
| Percentage | 6.3 | 93.7 |
Post script: This is my first HTML hack on my blog, to include the table.
do not understand what you want to convey. kindly express in detail.
ReplyDeleteHitesh
DeleteI was astounded by the disproportionate biomass of plants, especially of land plants
I shared that surprise.
Do u mean out of 10-12 tonnes of matter - plants are only 2.4 tonnes on land? How does that make 99.2%? Confusing.
ReplyDeleteI do understand the fact plants seem to be thriving more on land than in water. This is something amazing & new to me.
Not 10 to 12 tonnes. 10 raised to the power of 12. That is 1 followed by 12 zeroes. 1,000,000,000,000 tonnes. Each ton is a 1000 kilograms. Land Plants (mostly trees, especially gigantic trees, but also grasses, herbs, bushes) account for 2.4*10^12 tonnes, i.e, 2,400,000,000,000 tonnes of the mass of all life. All the animals on LAND - mammals, birds, reptiles, insects, worms etc - combined weight only 0.02*10^12 tonnes.
Delete2.4 is 100 times 0.02. In other words, the weight of plants growing on land is 100 times more than the weight of animals living on land. That is simply stunning.
Even more stunning is how much less is the biomass of life in water. Three fourths of the earth's surface is water, so you would expect water plants and animals to outnumber their counterparts on land. They perhaps do outNUMBER land creatures, but dont outWEIGH them.
The total mass of Green plants in Water, as per Kamshilov's estimate is 0.0002*10^12. Which is really 2.0*10^8. In other words, land plants outWEIGH water plants by 10,000 times. Same goes for animals which live in water.
Thanx. I saw ur reply only now. 🤭
ReplyDeleteWhat makes up the remaining matter? All inorganic stuff?