Gibbard, Philip and Bauer, Andrew M. and Edgeworth, Matthew and Ruddiman, William and Gill, Jacquelyn L. and Merritts, Dorothy and Finney, Stanley and Edwards, Lucy E. and Walker, Michael J. C. and Maslin, Mark and Ellis, Erle C. (2022) A practical solution: the Anthropocene is a geological event, not a formal epoch. Episodes, 45 (4). pp. 349-357. ISSN 2586-1298
Full text not available from this repository.Abstract
The Anthropocene has yet to be defined in a way that is functional both to the international geological community and to the broader fields of environmental and social sciences. Formally defining the Anthropocene as a chronostratigraphical series and geochronological epoch with a precise global start date would drastically reduce the Anthropocene’s utility across disciplines. Instead, we propose the Anthropocene be defined as a geological event, thereby facilitating a robust geological definition linked with a scholarly framework more useful to and congruent with the many disciplines engaging with human-environment interactions. Unlike formal epochal definitions, geological events can recognize the spatial and temporal heterogeneity and diverse social and environmental processes that interact to produce anthropogenic global environmental changes. Consequently, an Anthropocene Event would incorporate a far broader range of transformative human cultural practices and would be more readily applicable across academic fields than an Anthropocene Epoch, while still enabling a robust stratigraphic characterization.
| Item Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Subjects: | Q Science > QE Geology |
| Divisions: | Institutes and Academies > Institute of Education and Humanities > Academic Discipline: Humanities and Social Sciences |
| Depositing User: | Lesley Cresswell |
| Date Deposited: | 01 Sep 2023 13:51 |
| Last Modified: | 09 Jan 2024 17:10 |
| URI: | https://repository.uwtsd.ac.uk/id/eprint/2561 |
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