The Dynamic Aquaria volumes were written by the pioneers of the field of large-scale ecosystem modelling based in the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History. Beginning with a coral reef exhibit to demonstrate the functioning of these complex ecosystems to a wide public, the techniques developed were expanded to research efforts on many other marine and aquatic ecosystems, many of which are described in this 4th edition.

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Earth’s life, and the ecosystems that sustain human civilization, exist only in a narrow “goldilocks zone”, a zone limited by temperature and radiation levels and above-all the presence of liquid water. Industrial CO2 and methane are chemically altering earth’s atmosphere and oceans, disrupting its thermal balance. The resulting global warming is disrupting organisms at multiple levels, and the effects are magnified at the ecosystem level. Adding the chemical pollution of all waters, along with over-fishing, the global ecosystem on which our civilization depends is threatened. These changes are so severe and rapid that we now consider the biosphere to be in a new geological epoch, the Anthropocene! The central challenge of our age is whether  the collective intelligence of humanity is sufficient to fully understand earth’s biosphere, and then take the required social actions, to avoid destruction of the biosphere’s essential functions?

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A major key to scientific understanding is experimentation; however, ecosystem study has been predominantly descriptive in nature. The 4th Ed. of Dynamic Aquaria provides the reader with the knowledge to create the experimental ecosystems needed to more fully understand living organisms in their habitat. To support the creation of functioning microcosms and mesocosms of living marine and aquatic ecosystems, the 4th Edition of Dynamic Aquaria provides fundamental insights into the universal physical-chemical nature of the universe, including its carbon chemistry and biology. The unique characteristics of water that have allowed carbon chemistry to flourish and evolve a multitude of life on earth over 4 billion years are described.

Scientific advances in the last half millennium have focused on the physical-chemical world, including the basic biology of life. The last half century has critically added DNA, life’s messaging system, to our scientific toolkit. Previous editions of Dynamic Aquaria gave us the bioengineered tool Algal Turf Scrubbing (ATS). This edition demonstrates how these tools can support the development of functioning enclosed ecosystems to help solve global pollution problems. Dynamic Aquaria, among many other texts, can foster a deeper biological and ecological intelligence among our human population. Homo sapiens is not likely to cope with its environmental problems without a broader population level understanding of the processes.

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While this volume focuses on earth’s life in its marine and aquatic systems, astronomers have learned of the great abundance of exoplanets in our galaxy. Soon we will need the basic tools of Dynamic Aquaria to understand the life of those distant worlds, as carbon chemistry and liquid water are universal and inevitably lead to organisms and ecosystems.