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Introduction and overview: What do we know for sure?

Department of Earth Sciences, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, California 90089-0740; knealson{at}usc.edu

In the midst of an intellectual feeding frenzy with regard to interdisciplinary science, the area of microbial biogeochemistry (or subtle variations such as geomicrobiology, geobiology, and others) has emerged as an exciting way of thinking with regard to understanding our planet. So much so that it sometimes seems that we are actually beginning to understand the complex interactions between the biota and the highly modified planet that it occupies. The past two decades have seen dramatic advances in techniques used to analyze biological and geological samples, as well as advances in computing and information technology that have allowed modeling and simulations that would have been hardly dreamt of twenty years ago. Despite these advances it seems that, as often happens, the more we learn, the less we know. Some things have clearly emerged, however, and in this introduction we will attempt to assess what is known, what is thought, and to some extent, where the challenges lie.