Anthropocene
The Anthropocene is a proposed geological epoch marked by human activity’s significant effects on Earth’s climate, ecosystems, and geological record.
Paul Crutzen: A Dutch atmospheric chemist who shared the 1995 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for research on ozone depletion. Crutzen popularized the Anthropocene name in 2000, arguing that human influence had ended the Holocene.
Great Acceleration: The sharp post-1950 increase in human population, consumption, industrial activity, and environmental pressures. Its synchronized trends document the rapid intensification of human pressures proposed as an Anthropocene signal.
Crawford Lake: A small, deep lake in Ontario whose annually layered sediments preserve environmental changes over time. Its sediments were proposed as a reference record for a mid-twentieth-century Anthropocene boundary.
Common Era: The year-numbering system corresponding to the years after the traditionally reckoned birth of Jesus. Unlike a geological epoch, it is a calendar convention rather than a division based on stratigraphic evidence.
Planetary boundaries: A framework identifying Earth-system processes with proposed limits for maintaining conditions conducive to human societies. Both concepts describe humanity’s influence at planetary scale, but planetary boundaries assess risks rather than geologic time.
Eugene F. Stoermer: An American aquatic ecologist who used the term Anthropocene before it became widely known. Stoermer developed the term independently and later coauthored its influential presentation with Crutzen.
Anthropogenic climate change: Long-term changes in climate caused by human activities, especially greenhouse gas emissions. Human-caused warming alters climate systems and leaves measurable changes in ice, sediments, and ecosystems.
Bomb pulse: The global rise in atmospheric radiocarbon caused by nuclear weapons testing in the 1950s and 1960s. Its sharp signal provides a precise, widely detectable marker in sediments and biological materials.
Capitalocene: A critical term attributing ecological transformation to capitalism and its systems of production and power. It challenges the Anthropocene’s broad attribution of environmental change to humanity as a whole.
Earth system science: The interdisciplinary study of interactions among Earth’s atmosphere, oceans, land, life, and human activity. It provides the system-level perspective used to assess human-driven planetary change.