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: — evolution of the ecological and geochemical state of the environment under conditions of a virgin (anthropogenically untouched) biosphere; — structural features of the geochemical organization of the modern noosphere; — specificity of the interaction of living matter with the environment under increasing anthropogenic load. 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 tha