Posts Tagged ‘AWG’

Petrifying Earth Process: The Stratigraphic Imprint of Key Earth System Parameters in the Anthropocene

By Jan Zalasiewicz, Will Steffen, Reinhold Leinfelder, Mark Williams, Colin Waters | Theory, Culture & Society Abstract The Anthropocene concept arose within the Earth System science (ESS) community, albeit explicitly as a geological (stratigraphical) time term. Its current analysis by the stratigraphical community, as a potential formal addition to the Geological Time Scale, necessitates comparison of the methodologies and patterns of…

Read More

Anthropocene: its stratigraphic basis

By Jan Zalasiewicz, Colin Waters & Martin J. Head | Nature, Correspondence  As officers of the Anthropocene Working Group (AWG; J.Z. and C.W.) and chair of the Subcommission on Quaternary Stratigraphy (SQS; M.J.H.) of the International Commission on Stratigraphy (ICS), we note that the AWG has less power than Erle Ellis and colleagues imply (Nature 540, 192–193; 2016). Its role…

Read More

Involve social scientists in defining the Anthropocene

By Erle Ellis, Mark Maslin, Nicole Boivin & Andrew Bauer | Nature Three dozen academics are planning to rewrite Earth’s history. The Anthropocene Working Group of the International Commission on Stratigraphy (of which one of us, E.E., is a member) announced in August that over the next three years it will divide Earth’s story into two parts: one in which humans…

Read More

Atomic bombs and oil addiction herald Earth’s new epoch: The Anthropocene

By Paul Voosen | Science Magazine | August 24, 2016 Just after World War II, when the atomic bombs fell and our thirst for coal and oil became a full-blown addiction, Earth entered the Anthropocene, a new geologic time when humanity’s environmental reach left a mark in sediments worldwide. That’s the majority conclusion of the Anthropocene Working Group, a…

Read More

Define the Anthropocene in terms of the whole Earth

By Clive Hamilton | Nature | August 17, 2016 Do we live in the Anthropocene? Officially, not yet — although the debate about whether to declare a new geological epoch will resurface later this month at the International Geological Congress in Cape Town, South Africa. The concept of the Anthropocene has become well known and is much…

Read More