Scholarly record

FACTORS CONTRIBUTING TO TECHNOSPHERE

Aleksander Lipaev

Abstract

One of the factors looked upon as an intrinsic constituent contributing to the technosphere as a true phenomenon in the development of the humanity is industrialization. Being powered by fossil fuels, it greatly accelerated urbanization and enabled enormous development in agriculture. The latter could not but be the reason for mass migrations of people to cities which in turn created another positive effect ?urbanization? and ?urban metabolism? coined by Abel Wolman in 1965. The model considered the flow of materials and energy within cities. Therefore, a number of researcher undertaking their material flow analysis of a city were curious to discuss the reasons for cities development as they take up only 2% of Earth?s land surface though consume 75% of Earth?s resources. Cities have become the technosphere, an entirely artificialized environment, consuming in various forms and ways nearly all the Earth?s physical infrastructure. The technosphere is powered by fossil fuels. The authors discuss the classification of the Earth?s resources proposed by the Russian academician M. I. Agoshkov dividing them into seven major groups covering: mineral deposits; overburden rocks which in open mining are located in dumps; wastes from processing and metallurgical industries, so-called ?technogenic deposits?; deep and surface water sources; renewable energy sources (sun, wind, tides, waves, rivers, temperature of the oceans, terrestrial heat, etc.); natural and man-made cavities in the earth that can be inhabited or used by a human; industrial and household waste that can be recycled. Extensive development of minerals leads, among other things, to a significant increase in the volume of strip rocks (overburdens) and severe environmental problems associated with the human-made destruction of the lithosphere. In this regard, the paper focuses on the recycling of industrial and domestic wastes, involving them into the continuous technologic process, and large scale using ?green? energy. Industries should consider the priority of so-called ?natural? technologies. Thus, humanity faces the urgency of rational management of technosphere processes.

Publication Impact Profile

• Captures
• Mendeley - Readers: 11

PLUMX see details

DOI resolver: doi.org/10.5593/sgem2018/4.2/s18.011

Publication details

Back to publication list