• James Hutton, the father of modern geology, was a

Scottish farmer and naturalist. It was in farming that

he observed how land was shaped by destructive
forces of wind and weather systems.
• He described how the Earth was formed in a
repeated cycle of erosion and sedimentation, with
heat from volcanic activity as the driving force.
• He also introduced the concept of
uniformitarianism, implying that the geological
forces (such as those that trigger erosion and
volcanic activities) in the past are the same as those
in the present, making it possible to determine the
Earth's history by studying rocks.
• Alexander Von Humboldt, a 19th-century
geographer, helped establish the foundation for
Earth System Science through his observations of
nature.
• He, together with his colleagues, traveled to
America; collected botanical, zoological, and
geological specimens; recorded the location of the
specimens where they were found; and performed
atmospheric and geophysical measurements.
• From his records, he recognized patterns that reveal
underlying processes, such as the transport of heat
in ocean currents and the influence of temperature
on plants.
 VLADIMIR VERNADSKY
• Vladimir Vernadsky, one of the founders of
geochemistry, popularized the term noosphere. In
his theory of Earth development, he stated that
geosphere was the first phase of the Earth that was
developed.
• The second phase was the biosphere or biological
life. The emergence of life on Earth transformed the
geosphere. Then the noosphere, the sphere of
human consciousness, is the third phase. The
development of human cognition then transformed
the biosphere.
• Today, the study of human impact on the biosphere
led to the concept of sustainability, which is the
capacity of the Earth to continue to support human
life.
 JAMES LOVELOCK
• James Lovelock, a British environmentalist, proposed
the Gaia hypothesis, which postulates that the Earth
works as a self-regulating system.
• He stated that the living organisms co-evolve with
nonliving things in the environment to form a
synergistic, self-regulating system where life is
maintained and perpetuated. He cited as evidence
the photosynthetic bacteria during the Precambrian
times.
• The bacteria modified the Earth’s atmosphere to
become oxygen-enriched. The change in the
atmosphere then supported the evolution of more
complex organisms.
 LYNN MARGULIS
• Lynn Margulis, an evolutionary theorist,
further developed Lovelock’s Gaia
hypothesis.
• Margulis noticed that all kinds of bacteria
give off gases and thought that atmospheric
gases were from biological sources.
• She collaborated with Lovelock and
published a paper on how life regulates the
temperature and chemical composition of
the soil and the atmosphere.
National
Aeronautics and
Space
Administration
(NASA)
• The major landmark in the formal development of the Earth System
Science was the formation of the Earth System Science Committee in
NASA in 1983. NASA began to study components of the Earth system,
their linkages, dependencies, and fluxes.
• Scientists from NASA conduct the Earth Science Program with a
purpose of understanding the Earth system by using satellites for long-
term observations. By viewing the Earth from space, they have studied
how the planet is changing in response to human influences. For
instance, they have shown how the climate is changing due to the
increasing concentrations of carbon dioxide and aerosols from human
activities. These substances trap the Sun’s heat causing an increase in
the global temperature.
• At present, NASA continues to answer the question “How is the Earth
system changing, and what are the consequences of these
changes for life on Earth?”