Abstract
The hypothesis of an increase in free energy (exergy) by ecosystems during evolution is tested on direct measurements. As a measuring system of thermodynamic parameters (exergy, information, entropy), a series of measurements of reflected solar radiation in bands of Landsat multispectral imagery for 20 years is used. The thermodynamic parameters are compared for different types of ecosystems depending on the influx of solar radiation, weather conditions and the composition of communities. It is shown that maximization of free energy occurs only in a succession series (time scale of several hundred years), and on a short evolutionary time scale of several thousand years, various strategies of energy use are successfully implemented at the same time: forests always maximize exergy and, accordingly, transpiration, meadows—disequilibrium and biological productivity in summer, and swamps, due to a prompt response to changes in temperature and moisture, maintaining disequilibrium and productivity throughout the year. On the basis of the obtained regularities, we conclude that on an evolutionary time scale, the thermodynamic system changes in the direction of increasing biological productivity and saving moisture, which contradicts the hypothesis of maximizing free energy in the course of evolution.
Highlights
Beginning with Alfred Lotka [1,2], who was one of the first to try to determine the direction of evolution of living matter within the framework of thermodynamic theory, a clear idea of maximizing the energy used by the biosphere was formed as the goal of evolutionary development
The analysis of the dynamics in the thermodynamic variables showed that for the biosphere as a thermodynamic system, there are two relatively independent subsystems: subsystem that is responsible for the absorption of incoming solar energy, exergy and exergy conversion into heat flux and informational subsystem that is defined by entropy, information increment and biological productivity
Spring variation of the biological productivity is poorly described by external variables, which apparently indicates that the state of the landscape responds to the increase in the income of solar radiation with delay
Summary
Beginning with Alfred Lotka [1,2], who was one of the first to try to determine the direction of evolution of living matter within the framework of thermodynamic theory, a clear idea of maximizing the energy used by the biosphere was formed as the goal of evolutionary development. The “principle of maximum effect of external work” proposed by Ervin Bauer [4] is that the development of biological systems is the result of an increase in their external work—the impact of these systems on the environment. Based on this principle and the biogeochemical principles, Vladimir Vernadskiy [5], Vlail Kaznacheev [6] formulated the laws of Vernadskiy-Bauer: (1) geochemical biogenic energy tends in the biosphere to its maximum manifestation; (2) during the evolution of species, the organisms that increase their biogenic geochemical energy survive.
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