The Gaia hypothesis and chaos in Daisyworld

To correctly model the climate it is necessary to include the effects of the biosphere. The Gaia hypothesis claims that the earth's living matter, air, oceans, and land form a complex system which has the capacity to regulate the earth's climate. A model developed by Lovelock and Watson to demonstrate the Gaia hypothesis is explained and the results of their work are reviewed. Only steady state behavior is observed in the Daisyworld model. The work of Zeng et al. on the presence of chaos in Daisyworld is reviewed as an introduction to our own work. The presence of oscillatory and even chaotic behavior in this Daisyworld model brings into question the Gaia hypothesis.;We develop a model of two-dimensional crystal growth called Crystalworld. The Crystalworld model is similar to the Daisyworld model in that there is a coupling between the growing entities and their environment via temperature. The results of this model are similar to that of the Daisyworld model. We present the results of another modified model of Daisyworld which we developed. This modified model takes into account the finite response time of the daisies to changes in the planet's climatic conditions. With a generation time introduced into the model equations, while retaining the differential equation format, it is found that the system can show oscillatory and chaotic behavior. These results show that any climate-biosphere model must contain a time delay and that such a time delay leads to behavior which contradicts the Gaia hypothesis. In order to determine the effects of introducing more species we develop a model with two species of daisies and a parasite species. For this Parasite-Daisyworld model steady state, periodic and chaotic behavior is found. A comparison between the results of this model and that of Zeng et al. is made. The results of the Parasite-Daisyworld model show that increasing the number of species does not lead to increased regulation. This contradicts the Gaia hypothesis and leads us to conclude that the Gaia hypothesis is false.