Book Review: Deep Carbon: Past to Present. (2020) Edited by Beth N. Orcutt, Isabelle Daniel, and Rajdeep Dasgupta. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-1-108-47749-9, 684 pages, $79.99 Hardcover. Also available as an Open Access text at https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108677950.Carbon is essential to the origins and evolution of life, the behavior of the climate system, and a host of Earth-surface processes. It is therefore astounding that an estimated 90% of Earth’s carbon is concentrated deep beneath the surface: in the core, mantle, and deep crust. Not all of this “deep carbon” is permanently buried—plate tectonic activity and magmatic processes drive the continual flux of carbon into and out of these deep reservoirs, intricately linking carbon in the deep Earth with carbon at the surface—but these processes offer only a limited glimpse into what is going on beneath the surface of our planet.To study the diversity of carbon’s forms, behaviors, environments, and histories at great depth requires knowledge and instrumentation that have only recently become available and been put to the task. From 2009 to 2019, an interdisciplinary coalition of nearly a thousand scientists from three dozen countries—united under the umbrella of the Deep Carbon Observatory (DCO)—engaged in a collective effort to study the nature of Earth’s deep carbon; to probe its origins, quantities, and movements (and how these have changed over eons); and to characterize its relationships to other elements, to planetary processes, and to life on (and in!) the planet.Deep Carbon: Past to Present summarizes in one volume some of the most exciting developments that have arisen from this collaborative research effort. The book itself is a representation of the collective work undertaken by this international initiative: individual chapters are written by the investigators who undertook research in the chapter’s subject; the volume was compiled and edited by DCO members; and numerous original figures, which are gorgeous and take advantage of the book’s full-color format, were drafted especially for this publication by a member of the collaborative.The structure of the book is logical and follows from the organization of the DCO into four thematic communities. Chapters 2 through 7 summarize the work of the Extreme Physics and Chemistry Community, including the mechanisms and timing of carbon’s origins on Earth, its distribution throughout the planet’s interior over time, its forms and movements, and the effects of those dynamics on planetary processes at various temporal and spatial scales. Chapters 8 through 11 report on the research of the Reservoirs and Fluxes Community, including the delivery of carbon to the surface through subaerial and submarine volcanism, its return to the interior via subduction, and the influence of these processes on the surface carbon cycle and, in turn, on the climate, the hydrosphere, and life at the surface.Chapters 12 through 15 cover the work of the Deep Energy Community, with discussions of the structure, transport, and reactivity of carbon-bearing phases under the unique conditions of the deep Earth, the processes that can generate these materials, and ways to study and characterize them in a laboratory setting. Chapters 16 through 19 detail the investigations of the Deep Life Community, including the distribution and diversity of organisms in the subsurface, their interactions with and influences on the cycling of carbon-bearing materials, and the sources of energy for these processes. Chapter 20 (Deep Carbon Through Deep Time: Data-Driven Insights) concludes the volume by exhibiting the transformational power of applying state-of-the-science analysis and visualization methods to the wealth of presently available geological and biological data.The text is highly readable. Chapters are information-rich without being information-dense and range in length from about 25 to 50 pages, including references. Each chapter explicitly highlights connections between deep carbon and surface carbon, in addition to thoroughly discussing the techniques—experimental, analytical, and theoretical—used to interrogate the chapter’s topic. The descriptions of processes, phenomena, and their analysis are more technical and in-depth than in most textbooks while retaining a slightly more casual tone than might be expected in a journal manuscript. This intermediate style serves the material well by rendering it readable and interesting to seasoned researchers and students alike.Although the book is best read as a complete volume, individual chapters have the potential to serve as standalone references either for interested professionals or for educators wishing to provide their students with comprehensive overviews of selected topics. For example, Chapter 2 (Origin and Early Differentiation of Carbon and Associated Life-Essential Volatile Elements on Earth) might be appropriate as a reading for students in an introduction to geochemistry, while Chapter 11 (A Framework for Understanding Whole-Earth Carbon Cycling) could be included in a course on the climate system.The “Questions for the Classroom” section at the end of many chapters is an attractive feature, though the style of the questions varies somewhat from chapter to chapter. In Chapter 16 (Carbon in the Deep Biosphere: Forms, Fates, and Biogeochemical Cycling), for example, the questions are open-ended prompts for discussion that require the reader to integrate the chapter’s overarching points with its technical details, inviting extrapolation, creativity, and conjecture. In some chapters, including Chapter 13 (A Two-Dimensional Perspective on CH4 Isotope Clumping) and Chapter 17 (Biogeography, Ecology, and Evolution of Deep Life), the questions act as more of a content check to ensure the reader has understood the main points and can explain them clearly. Other chapters, such as Chapter 4 (Carbon-Bearing Phases throughout Earth’s Interior: Evolution through Space and Time), Chapter 9 (Carbon in the Convecting Mantle), and Chapter 14 (Earth as Organic Chemist), contain a mix of question types and exercises, inviting various modes of engagement from the reader. Overall, the “Questions” offer the reader a valuable opportunity to reflect on and engage with the material, whether alone, in a group, or in the classroom.It bears noting that, in addition to expecting a fundamental background in Earth sciences, many chapters assume literacy in general chemistry, including thermodynamics; notation and processes related to elemental abundances and isotopes; and some differential calculus. Though unfamiliarity with these subjects should not preclude a decent understanding of most of the material, the text is most comfortably geared toward those with prior coursework in mathematics, chemistry, Earth science, and physics at the college level.Making such high-caliber scholarship available in an open access format is outstanding and unfortunately rare, and it should be celebrated. The text’s online availability reinforces its suitability for use as a classroom reference. The open access version of the text includes hyperlinks to referenced literature and from one chapter to another, and it also makes available many of the high-quality figures mentioned previously, which can be expanded for a closer view or downloaded. Although a few animations and data tables are included on the open access site, other supplementary material—including databases and resources for students and educators—are hosted on the DCO website (deepcarbon.net).The book does lack some of the unity and consistency one might hope for in an edited volume. The introduction heralds the text as a “synthesis of the transformational discoveries in interdisciplinary deep carbon science that have occurred over the past decade” (p. 1). The text, however, does little to synthesize the separate but related topics covered in each chapter. Although each chapter provides its own summary, I would really like to have seen a concluding chapter devoted to drawing together (1) the advances in deep carbon science since the origins of the DCO that are covered throughout the volume, (2) the state of the field now, and (3) a sketch of the way forward: What outstanding questions are most pressing? What next steps will be key to addressing them? And how do the discoveries of the past decade set the stage for these future investigations?In a way, the volume itself serves as this synthesis. When read as a complete unit, the book is more than the sum of its chapters. What shines through is the truly masterful work done by this collaborative of researchers in producing a text that is at once deeply technical and highly readable, simply yet beautifully presented, logically structured while touching on nearly every field of science and technology—all within a year of the conclusion of the DCO’s decade-long endeavor. Particular praise is due to the individual chapter authors and the editors of the volume, who have evidently made great efforts to ensure the validity, relevance, and accessibility of the content in each chapter and throughout the book, an objective which has been decisively met. As a text reflecting the fundamental interdisciplinarity of the DCO’s research, Deep Carbon: Past to Present offers a wealth of insight into the workings of our planet that should be of interest to scientists from any field. Anybody with an interest in the science of Earth stands to enjoy the book as a whole.

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书评

书评：深碳：从过去到现在。(2020) 由​​ Beth N. Orcutt、Isabelle Daniel 和 Rajdeep Dasgupta 编辑。剑桥大学出版社。ISBN 978-1-108-47749-9，684 页，79.99 美元精装。也可在 https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108677950 上以开放获取文本的形式获得。碳对于生命的起源和进化、气候系统的行为以及许多地球表面过程至关重要。因此，令人震惊的是，地球上大约 90% 的碳都集中在地表深处：地核、地幔和地壳深处。并非所有这些“深层碳”都被永久掩埋——板块构造活动和岩浆过程驱使碳不断流入和流出这些深层储层，将地球深处的碳与地表的碳错综复杂地联系起来——但这些过程只能让我们有限地了解地球表面下发生的事情。深入研究碳的形式、行为、环境和历史的多样性需要最近才可用并投入使用的知识和仪器。从 2009 年到 2019 年，来自三个十几个国家的近千名科学家组成的跨学科联盟——在深碳观测站 (DCO) 的保护下联合起来——共同致力于研究地球深层碳的性质；探查它的起源、数量和运动（以及它们是如何在亿万年中发生变化的）；并描述它与其他元素、行星过程以及与地球上（和里面！）生命的关系。深碳：从过去到现在在一卷中总结了这项合作研究工作所产生的一些最令人兴奋的发展。这本书本身就是这一国际倡议所开展的集体工作的代表：个别章节由对该章节主题进行研究的研究人员撰写；该卷由DCO成员编译和编辑；大量的原创人物，华丽且充分利用了本书的全彩格式，是由一名协作成员专门为本出版物起草的。本书的结构合乎逻辑，遵循DCO的组织分为四个主题社区。第 2 章到第 7 章总结了极限物理和化学社区的工作，包括碳在地球上起源的机制和时间，随着时间的推移，它在地球内部的分布、它的形式和运动，以及这些动力学在不同时间和空间尺度上对行星过程的影响。第 8 章至第 11 章报告了储层和通量群落的研究，包括通过陆上和海底火山作用将碳输送到地表、通过俯冲返回内部，以及这些过程对地表碳循环的影响，以及，反过来，关于气候、水圈和地表生命。第 12 章到第 15 章涵盖了深层能源社区的工作，讨论了在独特条件下含碳相的结构、运输和反应性。地球深处，可以产生这些材料的过程，以及在实验室环境中研究和表征它们的方法。第 16 章至第 19 章详细介绍了对深层生命群落的研究，包括地下生物的分布和多样性、它们与含碳材料循环的相互作用和影响，以及这些过程的能源来源。第 20 章（深入时间的深碳：数据驱动的见解）通过展示将最新科学分析和可视化方法应用于当前可用的大量地质和生物数据的变革力量来总结本书。可读。章节信息丰富，但信息不密集，长度从 25 到 50 页不等，包括参考资料。每一章都明确强调了深层碳和表面碳之间的联系，此外还彻底讨论了这些技术——实验性、分析的和理论的——用于询问本章的主题。过程、现象及其分析的描述比大多数教科书更具技术性和深度，同时保留了比期刊手稿预期的稍微随意的语气。这种中级风格使经验丰富的研究人员和学生都具有可读性和趣味性，从而很好地为材料提供了良好的服务。尽管这本书最好作为完整卷阅读，但个别章节有可能成为感兴趣的专业人士或希望阅读的教育工作者的独立参考为学生提供所选主题的全面概述。例如，第 2 章（地球上碳和相关生命必需挥发性元素的起源和早期分化）可能适合作为学生地球化学导论的读物，而第 11 章（理解全地球碳循环的框架）可以包括在内在气候系统课程中。许多章节末尾的“课堂问题”部分是一个吸引人的功能，尽管问题的风格因章节而异。例如，在第 16 章（深层生物圈中的碳：形式、命运和生物地球化学循环）中，问题是开放式的讨论提示，要求读者将本章的总体要点与其技术细节结合起来，邀请外推、创造性, 和猜想。在某些章节中，包括第 13 章（CH4 同位素聚集的二维视角）和第 17 章（生物地理学、生态学和深层生命的进化），这些问题更多地充当了内容检查，以确保读者理解要点并能够解释他们清楚。其他章节，例如第 4 章（地球内部的含碳阶段：空间和时间的演化）、第 9 章（对流地幔中的碳）和第 14 章（作为有机化学家的地球），包含混合的问题类型和练习，邀请读者以各种方式参与。总体而言，“问题”为读者提供了一个宝贵的机会来反思和参与材料，无论是单独，在小组中还是在课堂上。值得注意的是，除了期望地球科学的基本背景之外，许多章节假定读者具备普通化学知识，包括热力学；与元素丰度和同位素有关的符号和过程；和一些微积分。虽然不熟悉这些科目不应妨碍对大部分材料的体面理解，但本书最适合那些在大学阶段有数学、化学、地球科学和物理课程的人。提供如此高水平的奖学金以开放获取的形式是杰出的，不幸的是很少见，应该庆祝。该文本的在线可用性加强了其作为课堂参考的适用性。文本的开放获取版本包括参考文献的超链接以及从一章到另一章的超链接，它还提供了前面提到的许多高质量的数字，可以扩展以进行更仔细的查看或下载。尽管开放访问站点上包含了一些动画和数据表，但其他补充材料（包括学生和教育工作者的数据库和资源）托管在 DCO 网站 (deepcarbon.net) 上。这本书确实缺乏一些统一性和一致性人们可能希望在经过编辑的卷中。引言将该文本称为“过去十年中发生的跨学科深层碳科学的变革性发现的综合”（第 1 页）。然而，本书几乎没有综合每章中涉及的独立但相关的主题。虽然每一章都有自己的总结，我真的很想看到一个总结章节，专门介绍 (1) 自 DCO 起源以来深层碳科学的进展，(2) 该领域的现状，以及 (3)展望未来：最紧迫的悬而未决的问题是什么？接下来的哪些步骤将是解决这些问题的关键？过去十年的发现如何为这些未来的调查奠定基础？在某种程度上，这本书本身就是这种综合。当作为一个完整的单元阅读时，这本书不仅仅是其章节的总和。最引人注目的是研究人员合作完成的真正精湛的工作，他们制作了一篇技术性很强、可读性强、简单而精美的文本，在 DCO 长达十年的努力结束后的一年内，几乎涵盖了科学和技术的所有领域。尤其要感谢本书的各个章节作者和编辑，他们显然为确保每章和整本书内容的有效性、相关性和可访问性做出了巨大努力，这一目标已果断地实现。作为反映 DCO 研究的基本跨学科性的文本，《深碳：从过去到现在》提供了对我们星球运作的丰富见解，任何领域的科学家都应该感兴趣。任何对地球科学感兴趣的人都可以从整体上欣赏这本书。尤其要感谢本书的各个章节作者和编辑，他们显然为确保每章和整本书内容的有效性、相关性和可访问性做出了巨大努力，这一目标已果断地实现。作为反映 DCO 研究的基本跨学科性的文本，《深碳：从过去到现在》提供了对我们星球运作的丰富见解，任何领域的科学家都应该感兴趣。任何对地球科学感兴趣的人都可以从整体上欣赏这本书。尤其要感谢本书的各个章节作者和编辑，他们显然为确保每章和整本书内容的有效性、相关性和可访问性做出了巨大努力，这一目标已果断地实现。作为反映 DCO 研究的基本跨学科性的文本，《深碳：从过去到现在》提供了对我们星球运作的丰富见解，任何领域的科学家都应该感兴趣。任何对地球科学感兴趣的人都可以从整体上欣赏这本书。作为反映 DCO 研究的基本跨学科性的文本，《深碳：从过去到现在》提供了对我们星球运作的丰富见解，任何领域的科学家都应该感兴趣。任何对地球科学感兴趣的人都可以从整体上欣赏这本书。作为反映 DCO 研究的基本跨学科性的文本，《深碳：从过去到现在》提供了对我们星球运作的丰富见解，任何领域的科学家都应该感兴趣。任何对地球科学感兴趣的人都可以从整体上欣赏这本书。