In accordance with traditional science concepts Biosphere covers part of the atmosphere, hydrosphere, and the upper part of the lithosphere, which are interconnected by complex biogeochemical cycles of matter and energy migration (Vernadsky - biogenic migration of atoms). It is three-dimensional and geoistorichna, so when we're talking about within it, we have in mind the limits of physical conditions for the existence of living organisms at a specific time (by the way, some parts of the earth's surface life may be temporarily absent).
In the literature, existence of life often limited temperature range from 250 to +160 ° C, pressures of from 0.001 to 3000 atm. The lower limit of conditional life takes place in an aqueous medium at a depth of 10 km, the Earth's crust - to a depth of 2 km in the atmosphere of the upper border of life due to the ozone layer that protects living matter from the sun's ultraviolet radiation and is located at an altitude of 45 km above sea level.
Of course, that within these "parameters" are present not only the field of life, but the structure of the Earth and other genetically related to living matter. Vernadsky, the substance of the biosphere consists of seven diverse but geologically related parts: 1) living matter; 2) Nutrients; 3) inert substance; 4) bioinert substance; 5) the radioactive material; 6) scattered atoms; 7) the substance of cosmic origin. Traces of biogeochemical activity are present almost everywhere: atmospheric gases (oxygen, nitrogen, carbon dioxide), natural water, hydrocarbon resources, limestone, clay and their derivatives (schists, marbles, granites, etc..) Basically created the living matter of the planet. That's why wrongly understood by the biosphere, the totality of living organisms. Layers of the Earth's crust, deprived now of living matter, but processed them in the geological past, Vernadsky relates to "former biospheres."
In the scientific literature there are different views on the limits of the biosphere. In this case, differences are, as a rule, is that in some cases it is a question of a proven "field of the existence of life," in the other - on the theoretical limits of the biosphere.
Beyond the biosphere