Technosphere? Novel ecosystem? Natural ecosystem? How to represent which parts of biosphere that are under technical human influcence?

[cfrancois7]

Dear everyone,

I'm dealing with the Industrial Ecology. One particular aspect of a such domain of sciences is it deals with the antagonism/analogy between the natural ecosystems and the human ecosystems. Often, it is the terms of technosphere as opposition of the biosphere that is used. The term technosphere the ways it is used could be defined as an environmental system that includes all the human technical artefacts that interact and influence the biosphere.

I got a problem by re-using the term biosphere from ENVO, because it represents all the living entities within the gravitational sphere of influence of an astronomical body, and the non-living and dead entities which they interact with. In other words, it includes entirely the technosphere. So, if I wish to distinguish a flow that has end location the technosphere from a flow that has end location biosphere, it is not possible because technosphere by definition should be subclass-of biosphere.

Is it not possible to redefine the biosphere term in order to take into account the technosphere and its influence on the biosphere?

[pbuttigieg]

Hi @cfrancois7

Thanks for your request - it's great to hear from the industrial ecology domain!

I got a problem by re-using the term biosphere from ENVO, because it represents all the living entities within the gravitational sphere of influence of an astronomical body, and the non-living and dead entities which they interact with. In other words, it includes entirely the technosphere.

This is true if we assume some living entity is present wherever a technological one is, which may not always be the case. We can assert that they overlap - would that work?

So, if I wish to distinguish a flow that has end location the technosphere from a flow that has end location biosphere, it is not possible because technosphere by definition should be subclass-of biosphere.

It would probably be a system that overlaps with a biosphere, as long as living entities are interacting with technological entities.

So, if I wish to distinguish a flow that has end location the technosphere from a flow that has end location biosphere, it is not possible because technosphere by definition should be subclass-of biosphere.

As described above, it would probably be an overlap relation between technosphere and biosphere rather than a subclass relation.

Could you give a few examples of such flows? I have a feeling that ENVO's natural environment term may be useful for your case (i.e. that part of the biosphere that has not been anthropised)

Is it not possible to redefine the biosphere term in order to take into account the technosphere and its influence on the biosphere?

I think this would cause issues as biosphere is typically used in a very broad and inclusive sense. To help resolve these flows, we could add technosphere as:

technosphere =def. "An environmental system which includes, as parts, all the entities which have been constructed by humans or their technology within the gravitational sphere of influence of an astronomical body."

Would that - in combination with natural environment work? If not, we could create a class specifically referencing the living parts of the biosphere.

[cfrancois7]

Thank you for your reply.

Yes, I think you're right. It seems the technosphere overlaps the biosphere is more right because it interacts with living beings for a part but not entirely. For instance, the robots that manufacture robots or the technosphere that extends in the deep ground (oil extraction) behind the biosphere, raise some questions. It is just I was thinking every thing that is build by human beings interacts at some time with a human being, so fall under the biosphere concept. Maybe it is an interpretation too literal.

Could you give a few examples of such flows

The anthropogenic emissions and effluents such as CO2, lead residuals, copper residuals or chemical products that are discharged in the rivers, forestry soils or to air have end location outside the technosphere. The goods produced by a manufacture have end location the technosphere, they are used as intermediate products to manufacture another products or as final products for household. Also the residuals that are confined deep in the lithosphere (old mine, deep ground) stay in the technosphere.

If we consider the technosphere is a -sphere that overlaps the biosphere, the problem is solved.

[pbuttigieg]

The anthropogenic emissions and effluents such as CO2, lead residuals, copper residuals or chemical products that are discharged in the rivers, forestry soils or to air have end location outside the technosphere.

I see, thanks for clarifying.

We now have (soon to be released):

technosphere =def. "An environmental system which includes, as parts, all the entities which have been constructed or manufactured by humans or their technology within the gravitational sphere of influence of an astronomical body.

This overlaps with a biosphere: the necessary parts of the technosphere are parts of the biosphere.

Note that we have some classes (many of which need development) for emission processes and the like. We'd be happy to host more. If you have many to add, we could arrange guest editorship.

The goods produced by a manufacture have end location the technosphere, they are used as intermediate products to manufacture another products or as final products for household. Also the residuals that are confined deep in the lithosphere (old mine, deep ground) stay in the technosphere.

I've added axioms to state that the technosphere has constructed features and manufactured products as parts. Also, there are now classes for "manufacturing process" and "planetary manufacturing process" queued for release, which have manufactured products as their outputs. The latter "has end location" some technosphere, but I'm not sure what the "z" process (referring to the definition of "has end location") is here: could you clarify?

[cfrancois7]

but I'm not sure what the "z" process

has end location and has start location are used to describe the processes that starts and ends in different independant continuants. Consider the "z" process as the part of the process that occurs in one of the independant continuants. For instance, the flow of air between your house and outside has parts that occur at the same time in the house (start) and oustide (end).

I hope it helps.

First, we'll finish the development of the ontology and we'll perform some adjustment for a better integration with ENVO, and why not, at this end, keep only the data representation in our ontology and use ENVO to represent real process.

[cmungall]

"within the gravitational sphere of influence of an astronomical body"

This would presumably include orbital debris. However, technosphere is a subclass of 'astronomical body part' which is "A material part of an astronomical body.". I don't think space junk is considered part of earth (cc-ing our space junk expert, @ramonawalls ).

It seems the "gravitational sphere of influence" is a definable entity that could be included in ENVO (either a region, or a disposition) and used in the Xsphere design pattern. Maybe a more useful grouping class than ABP would be something like a "stratum" or subdivision of a sphere.

ref: https://space.stackexchange.com/questions/3015/how-large-is-the-earths-gravitational-sphere-of-influence-and-how-can-it-be-cal

[pbuttigieg]

It seems the "gravitational sphere of influence" is a definable entity that could be included in ENVO (either a region, or a disposition) and used in the Xsphere design pattern. Maybe a more useful grouping class than ABP would be something like a "stratum" or subdivision of a sphere.

This is called a Hill sphere which I'll add to the next release.

This would presumably include orbital debris. However, technosphere is a subclass of 'astronomical body part' which is "A material part of an astronomical body.". I don't think space junk is considered part of earth (cc-ing our space junk expert, @ramonawalls ).

Good point, but I would think that space debris is considered part of Earth's technosphere. The current def of astronomical body is sort of non-committal here:

An object which is naturally occurring, bound together by gravitational or electromagnetic forces, and surrounded by space.

"bound together" suggests some sort of material integrity, but not very definitively.

[cmungall]

good point, I read "body" and with my anatomical bias I assumed a contiguous entity

[ramonawalls]

It is strange to consider e.g. earth and everything bound by its gravitational pull as a bfo:object, but I would consider debris or manmade satellites in near earth orbit to be part of the earth technosphere. How essential is it to define a technosphere as part of an astronomical body? Would it make more sense to use overlaps here?

FYI, we are still trying to get funding for a space object behavior ontology. Seems like a lot of the newer ENVO terms will be quite helpful for that if it comes through.

[cfrancois7]

I don't have the permission access to read the papers from SAGE, but it seems there are some interesting papers about the verticality aspect of the technosphere: click here and from the same author, a blog post.

[pbuttigieg]

The various spheres fall under environmental system rather than object.

We could consider something similar for astronomical bodies + the entities in their Hill spheres.

'astronomical body system ' =def. "A system which is composed of entities held within the Hill sphere of an astronomical body by gravity."

This would work for the Solar system as an instance of star system.

The interactions of system components proceeds by gravitational effects and define the system's integrity.

Thinking about objecthood in this realm, nebulae are loosely bound together relative to planets, would they also not bebe objects? Or does the evenness of their low density give them the rounded oddness needed? I'm leaning (nay, am gravitating) towards the latter.

On 28 Jun 2017 07:34, "cfrancois7" notifications@github.com wrote:

I don't have the permission access to read the papers from SAGE, but it seems there are some interesting papers about the verticality aspect of the technosphere: click here http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/2053019617696106?journalCode=anra and from the same author, a blog post http://technosphere-magazine.hkw.de/article1/cd07bf50-921e-11e6-9341-7d6509c7f586/5f112fd0-914d-11e6-bb8e-515155f3fd55 .

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[jimhu-tamu]

Ran across this issue while browsing ENVO for OMP related issues. Thought this project might be of interest: https://www.microbe.net microbiology of the built environment network.