1 The Scope of Environmental Physics

Physics has always been concerned with understanding the natural environment, and, in its early days, was often referred to as Natural Philosophy. Environmental Physics, as we choose to dene it, is the measurement and analysis of interactions between organisms and their environments. To grow and reproduce successfully, organisms must come to terms with the state of their environment. Some microorganisms can grow at temperatures between 6 and 120 C and, when they are desiccated, can survive even down to 272 C. Higher forms of life on the other hand have adapted to a relatively narrow range of environments by evolving sensitive physiological responses to external physical stimuli. When environments change, for example because of natural variation or because of human activity, organisms may, or may not, have sufciently exible responses to survive. The physical environment of plants and animals has ve main components which determine the survival of the species: (i) the environment is a source of radiant energy which is trapped by the process of photosynthesis in green cells and stored in the form of carbohydrates, proteins, and fats. These materials are the primary source of metabolic energy for all forms of life on land and in the oceans; (ii) the environment is a source of the water, carbon, nitrogen, other minerals, and trace elements needed to form the components of living cells; (iii) factors such as temperature and daylength determine the rates at which plants grow and develop, the demand of animals for food, and the onset of reproductive cycles in both plants and animals; (iv) the environment provides stimuli, notably in the form of light or gravity, which are perceived by plants and animals and provide frames of reference both in time and in space. These stimuli are essential for resetting biological clocks, providing a sense of balance, etc.; (v) the environment determines the distribution and viability of pathogens and parasites which attack living organisms, and the susceptibility of organisms to attack. To understand and explore relationships between organisms and their environment, the biologist should be familiar with the main concepts of the environmental sciences. He or she must search for links between physiology, biochemistry, and molecular biology on the one hand and atmospheric science, soil science, and hydrology on the other. One of these links is environmental physics. The presence of an organism modies
Principles of Environmental Physics, Fourth Edition. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-386910-4.00001-9 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Principles of Environmental Physics

the environment to which it is exposed, so that the physical stimulus received from the environment is partly determined by the physiological response to the environment. When an organism interacts with its environment, the physical processes involved are rarely simple and the physiological mechanisms are often imperfectly understood. Fortunately, physicists are trained to use Occams Razor when they interpret natural phenomena in terms of cause and effect: i.e. they observe the behavior of a system and then seek the simplest way of describing it in terms of governing variables. Boyles Law and Newtons Laws of Motion are classic examples of this attitude. More complex relations are avoided until the weight of experimental evidence shows they are essential. Many of the equations discussed in this book are approximations to reality which have been found useful to establish and explore ideas. The art of environmental physics lies in choosing robust approximations which maintain the principles of conservation for mass, momentum, and energy. Such approximations are often described as models. These models may be either theoretical or experimental, and both types are found in this book. We have not considered models of plant or animal systems based on computer simulations. They can rarely be tested in the sense that physicists use the word because so many variables and assumptions are deployed in their derivation. Consequently, although they can be useful for identifying the sensitivity of systems to environmental variables, they seldom seem to us to contribute to an understanding of the principles of environmental physics. Several volumes would be needed to cover all relevant principles of environmental physics, and the denite article was deliberately omitted from the title of this book because it makes no claim to be comprehensive. However, the topics which it covers are central to the subject: the exchange of radiation, heat, mass, and momentum between organisms and their environment. Within these topics, similar analysis can be applied to a number of closely related problems in plant, animal, and human ecology. The short bibliography at the end of the book should be consulted for more specialized treatments, for example of subjects such as the physics of water, heat, and solute transfer in soils. The lack of a common language is often a barrier to progress in interdisciplinary subjects and it is not easy for a physicist or atmospheric scientist with no biological training to communicate with a physiologist or ecologist who is fearful of formulae. Throughout the book therefore, simple electrical analogs are used to describe rates of transfer and exchange between organisms and their environment, and calculus has been kept to a minimum. The concept of resistance (and its reciprocal, conductance) has been familiar to plant physiologists for many years, mainly as a way of expressing the physical factors that control rates of transpiration and photosynthesis, and animal physiologists have used the term to describe the insulation provided by clothing, coats, or by a layer of air. In micrometeorology, aerodynamic resistances derived from turbulent transfer coefcients can be used to calculate uxes from a knowledge of the appropriate gradients, and resistances which govern the loss of water from vegetation are now incorporated in models of the atmosphere that include the behavior of the earths surface. Ohms Law has therefore become an important unifying principle of environmental physics; the basis of a common language for biologists and physicists. The choice of units was dictated by the structure of the Systme International, modied by retaining the centimeter. For example, the dimensions of leaves are quoted

The Scope of Environmental Physics

in mm and cm. To adhere strictly to the meter or the millimeter as units of length often needs powers of 10 to avoid superuous zeros and sometimes gives a false impression of precision. As most measurements in environmental physics have an accuracy between 1% and 10%, they should be quoted to two or at most three signicant gures, preferably in a unit chosen to give quantities between 101 and 103 . The area of a leaf would therefore be quoted as 23.5 cm2 rather than 2.35 103 m2 or 2350 mm2 . Conversions from SI to c.g.s. are given in the Appendix, Table A.1.