Harvesting the Biosphere: What We Have Taken from Nature

In Harvesting the Biosphere, Vaclav Smil offers an interdisciplinary and quantitative account of human claims on the biosphere"s stores of living matter, from prehistory to the present day. Smil examines all harvests"from prehistoric man"s hunting of megafauna to modern crop production"and all uses of harvested biomass, including energy, food, and raw materials. Without harvesting of the biomass, Smil points out, there would be no story of human evolution and advancing civilization; but at the same time, the increasing extent and intensity of present-day biomass harvests are changing the very foundations of civilization"s well-being.