Anthropocene- The Age of Man -

Have we arrived at the Anthropocene?

Have we arrived at the Anthropocene?

Cenozoic Era

Pleistocene Epoch Holocene Epoch Anthropocene Epoch

Neogene Period

Paleogene Period ?Quaternary Period

“It’s a new name for a new GEOLOGIC EPOCH – defined by ‘Man’s’ impact on the planet Earth; a mark that will endure long after our cities have crumbled.

The word ‘ANTHROPOCENE’ was coined by Dutch chemist Paul Crutzen while sitting at a scientific conference. The Conference Chairperson kept referring to the HOLOCENE EPOCH (that began at the end of the last ICE AGE, 11,500 years ago) and that officially at least [to some degree] continues to this day.

Probably the most obvious way MAN is altering the planet EARTH is by building CITIES which are essentially vast stretches of MAN-MADE MATERIALS: steel, glass, concrete and brick. Most cities don’t stand the test of time, for the simple reason that they are built on LAND and on land the FORCES OF EROSION tend to win out over those of SEDIMENTATION.

Enter The Anthropocene

- The Age of Man -

Chronostratigraphy: The branch of geology concerned with establishing the absolute ages of strata.

Epoch: Point marking the start of a new period in time. A division of time that is a subdivision of a period and is itself subdivide into ages, corresponding to a series in chronostratigraphy. (e.g. era, age, time, aeon, span)

Erosion: Is the wearing away of the land by forces such as water, wind and ice.

Geology: The science which deals with the physical structure and substance of the earth, their history and the processes which act on them.

Sedimentation: The natural process in which material (such as stones and sand) is carried to the bottom of a body of water and forms a solid layer.

Man has also transformed the planet EARTH through farming; something like 38% of the planet’s ice-free land is now devoted to AGRICULTURE.

FERTILIZER FACTORIES, for example, now fix more NITROGEN from the air, converting it to a biological usable form, than all the plants and MICROBES on land; the RUNOFF from fertilized fields are choking river mouths with the growth of ALGAE. It is hard to detect THE NITROGEN CYCLE (Video: The Nitrogen Cycle) as the synthesized nitrogen is just like its natural equivalent.

Enter The Anthropocene- The Age of Man -

Agriculture:The science or practice of farming, including cultivation of the soil for the growing of crops and the rearing of animals to provide food, wool, and other products.

Alga (plural: Algae):The algae comprise several different groups of living things which are similar to plants but are not actually true plants. All algae lack true leaves, roots, flowers, stems and vascular tissue [circulates fluid and nutrients]. (e.g. seaweed)

Fertilizer:A chemical or natural substance added to soil or land to increase its fertility.

Microbe:Is any living organism that spends its life at a size too tiny to be seen with the naked eye. Microbes are single-cell organisms and are the oldest form of life on earth. (e.g. bacteria)

Runoff: is precipitation that did not get absorbed into the soil or did not evaporate and so made its way from the ground surface into places that water collects. Runoff causes erosion and also carries chemicals and substances on the ground surface along the rivers where the water ends up.

Probably the most significant change, from a GEOLOGIC PERSEPECTIVE, is the one that we can’t see – the change in the composition of the atmosphere. CARBON DIOXIDE emissions are colourless, odourless and in an immediate sense, harmless. But their warming effects could easily push GLOBAL temperatures to level that have not been seen for millions of years.

Some plants and animals are already shifting their ranges toward the Poles (North and South), and those shifts will leave traces in the FOSSIL RECORD. Some species will not survive GLOBAL WARMING at all. Meanwhile rising temperatures could eventually raise sea levels twenty (20) feet or more.

Enter The Anthropocene- The Age of Man -

Carbon Dioxide:A colourless, odourless gas produced by burning carbon and organic compounds and y respiration. It is naturally present in air (about 0.03) and is absorbed by plants in photosynthesis.

Chlorofluorocarbon:Any of a class of compounds of carbon, hydrogen, chlorine and fluorine typically gases used in refrigerants and aerosol propellants. They are harmful to the ozone layer in the earth’s atmosphere owing to the release of chlorine atoms on exposure to ultraviolet radiation.

Fossil:The remains or impression of a prehistoric plant or animal embedded in rock and preserved in petrified form. There are two main types of fossils: BODY and TRACE. Body Fossils include the remains of organisms that were once living and Trace Fossils are the signs that organisms were present (i.e. footprints, tracks, trails and burrows)

Fossil Record:The ‘fossil record’ refers to the placement of FOSSILS throughout the surface layers of the Earth. Older fossils are buried more deeply than younger ones. Scientists use the placement of FOSSILS as a guide for determining when life forms existed and how they evolved.

Global WarmingA gradual increase in the overall temperature of the earth’s atmosphere generally attributed to the greehhouse effect caused by increased levels of carbon dioxide, CFCs (Chloroflurocarbons) and other pollutants.

Enter The Anthropocene- The Age of Man -

Acid:A substance with particular chemical properties including turning litmus red, neutralizing alkalis and dissolving some metals typically a corrosive or sour-tasting liquid of this kind.

Acid rain: Rainfall made so acidic by atmospheric pollution that it causes environmental harm chiefly to forests and lakes. The main cause is the industrial burning of coal and other fossil fuels, the waste gases from which contain sulphur and nitrogen oxides which combine with atmospheric water to form acids.

Geologic Record: The Geologic Record is the history of Earth as recorded in the rocks that make up its crust. Rocks have been forming and wearing away since Earth first started to form, creating sediment that accumulates in layers of rock called strata.

Reef Gaps:Throughout Earth’s history, there have been periods where climate hanged dramatically. The history of coral reefs gives us an insight into the nature of these events as reefs are so enduring and the fossil record of corals is relatively well known. These intervals are known as ‘reef gaps’.

Long after the ‘Impact of Man’ (by his cars, cities, factories) has turned to dust, the consequences of burning billions of tons worth of coal and oil are likely to be more clearly noticeable.

As CARBON DIOXIDE warms Earth, it also seeps into the oceans and ACIDIFIES them. More likely sometime this century they may become acidified to the point that corals can no longer construct reefs, which would register in the GEOLOGIC RECORD as a ‘reef gap’.

REEF GAPS have marked each of the past five (5) major mass extinctions. The most recent one, which is believed to have been caused by the impact of an asteroid, took place 65 million years ago, at the end of the CRETACEOUS PERIOD; it eliminated not just the dinosaurs, but also the plesiosaurs, pterosaurs and ammonites (an ammonoid fossil).

If we have indeed entered a NEW EPOCH, then when exactly did it begin?When did human impacts rise to the level of GEOLOGIC SIGNIFICANCE?

William Ruddiman, a PALEOCLIMATOLOGIST at the University of Virginia, has proposed that the invention of AGRICULTURE some 8,000 years ago and the DEFORESTATION that resulted led to an increase in ATMOSPHERIC CO2 just large enough to stave off what otherwise would have been the start of a new ice age; in his view, humans have been the dominant force on planet Earth practically since the start of the HOLOCENE. Crutzen has suggested that the ANTHROPOCENE began in the late 18th century when ice cores show carbon dioxide levels began what has since proved to be an uninterrupted rise. Other scientists put the beginning of the NEW EPOCH in the middle of the 20th century when the rates of both population growth and consumption accelerated rapidly.”

Adapted from Enter the Anthropocene - The Age of Man -by Elizabeth Kolbert

Enter The Anthropocene- The Age of Man -

Deforestation:Is the permanent destruction of forests in order to make the land available for other uses.“Deforestation refers to the cutting, clearing and removal of rainforest or related ecosystems into less bio-diverse ecosystems such as pasture, cropland or plantations.” (Kricher, 1997)Causes: logging, mining, oil and gas extraction, cattle ranching, cash crops, Local National and International factors like land titles, government subsidies, trade agreements, civil wars, lack of resources and lack of law enforcement.

Paleoclimatology:Is the study of changes in climate taken on the scale of the entire history of Earth. Paleoclimatologists are scientists who figure out what the earth’s climate was like before written records existed. They find clues in pollen from trees and plant at archaeological sites and in ice, soil and lake beds. Fossils of plants and animals also can hold clues about what the climate was like hundreds thousands, millions or even billions of years ago.

Oil transformed Dubai in the 1970s.

The city now boasts the world's tallest building, giant malls, and some two million residents, who depend on desalinated seawater and air-conditioning—and thus on cheap energy—to live in the Arabian desert.

Photography by Jens Neumann/Edgar Rodtman

1.

Changing Seas - Rosignano Solvay, ItalyA Tuscan beach captures the textured drama of humans and the sea. The "tropical" sands aren't natural; they're whitened by carbonates from the chemical plant, which also discharged mercury until recently. The plant converts salt extracted from the sea into chlorine and other essential products. Fossil fuels power such transformations; worldwide, the CO2 from smokestacks and tailpipes is slowly acidifying the ocean, threatening marine life.

Photography by Massimo Vitali

2.

The Oil CenturySouth Belridge, CaliforniaDiscovered in 1911, this field pumped on as cities were rebuilt for cars and as ancient petroleum molecules were spun into household products such as plastics, cosmetics, and pharmaceuticals. South Belridge today produces 32 million barrels a year—enough for nine hours of world demand. In this century the world's supply may plummet.

photography by Edward Burtynsky

3.

Moving MountainsKayford Mountain, West VirginiaAs oil companies drill deeper for offshore oil, mining companies work 24/7 to level Appalachian peaks for coal, which supplies half of U.S. electricity. This summit vanished in a day. Some 470 have been erased since the 1980s; the waste often buries streams. Mountaintop removal recovers just 6 percent of a coal deposit.

photograph by J Henry Fair

4.

The Sixth Mass ExtinctionMuseum of History, Aralsk, KazakhstanThe SHIP STURGEON Endangered Species: Ship Sturgeon is near extinction, and it's already gone from the Aral Sea; water diversion for cotton farming reduced what was once the world's fourth largest lake to a dust bowl. In the past half billion years asteroid impacts and other natural events have caused five catastrophic mass extinctions of plants and animals. Humans may be causing a sixth.

Photograph by Carolyn Drake

5.

Industrial FarmingAlmería Province, SpainOn the arid plains of southern Spain, produce is grown under the world's largest array of greenhouses and trucked north. Greenhouses use water and nutrients efficiently and produce all year—tomatoes in winter, for instance. But globally the challenge is grain and meat, not tomatoes. It takes 38 percent of Earth's ice-free surface to feed seven billion people today, and two billion more are expected by 2050.

Photograph by Edward Burtynsky

6.

Food ChemistryEl Ejido, Spain Fertilizers and pesticides make possible the high yields and flawless produce celebrated by this Spanish billboard. The side effects are far-reaching—nitrogen runoff from fertilized land, for example, causes dead zones at the mouths of rivers worldwide.

Photograph by Reinaldo Loureiro

7.

A Dammed World - Hoover Dam and Lake Mead, NevadaDams tame floods, water crops (and people), and generate 16 percent of the world's electricity, carbon free. They have also displaced 40 to 80 million people and destroyed river ecosystems. More than half the world's large rivers are now dammed. Some, like the Colorado, are tapped out. Persistent drought has left a "bathtub ring" in Lake Mead, which supplies water to much of the Southwest.

Photograph by Mitch Epstein

8.

Alien InvadersAkron, AlabamaKudzu, a fast-growing Asian vine, has smothered millions of acres in the United States since it was planted in the 1930s to control erosion. Exotics spread by humans are a global threat to biodiversity (the variety of plant and animal life in the world or in a particular habitat). Most of the species on the U.S. threatened and endangered lists are there in part because of alien invaders.

Photograph by William Christenberry

9.

A Tide of WasteChittagong, BangladeshShip breaking delivers jobs to Bangladesh and a wealth of scrap metal—but also asbestos, PCBs (polychlorinated biphenyls – industrial products or chemicals), and other toxics. Though waste recycling generally is booming, so is waste production. In American cities in recent decades, the two trends have just about offset each other.

Photograph by Edward Burtynsky

10.

Urban Supersprawl - Mexico City, Mexico Some 20 million people live in Mexico City, the world's fifth largest metropolitan area. In 1800 the urban fraction of the global population was 3 percent. Today it is 50 percent and rising. In crowded shantytowns, the need for clean water and sanitation is urgent. But urbanization has an upside: per capita, cities use less energy and pollute less than rural areas.

Photograph by Pablo Lopez Luz

11.

The Face of Seven Billion

The Face of Seven BillionEarth’s seven billion are depicted by 7,000 figures each representing a million people.

Go to the following websiteInteractive: The Face of Seven Billion: The Age of Man

to:• Zoom into the image;• Learn how it was made;

Learn facts about ‘The Face of Seven Billion’: Language; Nationality; Religion; Livelihood; Urban vs Rural; Literacy.

Ponder. Think. Conclusion? Solution?

Ponder. Think. Conclusion? Solution?

Ponder. Think. Conclusion? Solution?

Webography & Resources• Endangered Species: Ship Sturgeon

• Enter the Anthropocene - The Age of Man –

• Interactive: The Face of Seven Billion: The Age of Man

• Photo Gallery: Anthropocene: The Age of Man

Assembled: A. Ballas