What Happened to the Anthropocene Epoch?
The Anthropocene Epoch was rejected by geologists, but not the Anthropocene as a general term.
Why I Resigned from the Anthropocene Working Group
After 14 years of professional work as a member of the Anthropocene Working Group (AWG), I’ve now tendered my formal resignation. The pdf of the letter is <here>. Dear Anthropocene Working Group: It is with mixed emotions that I am sending this letter to resign from the Anthropocene Working Group. I’ve been a member since AWG began in 2009 and […]
A Nature Guide for a Human Planet
What is Nature? Are you imagining a place without people? If you did, that’s no surprise. Even in kindergarten many are taught to think of the global patterns of nature in terms of tropical rainforests, savannas, deserts, and other “natural” patterns of ecology – the biomes shaped by climate that were first recognized by Alexander von Humboldt more than two […]
On the passing of Will Steffen
This morning, I learned, through the Anthropocene Working Group (AWG), that Will Steffen had just died. I just had to pause and think about him, and this is my spontaneous Monday morning reflection. Will’s body of work and many accolades will testify to his formative and ongoing influence on the fields of global change and Earth system science. In fact, […]
Why there’s no such thing as pristine nature
A growing body of research shows that people have been shaping the planet for millennia — muddying the very idea of wilderness and prompting calls for a revolution in ecology and conservation.
12,000 years of Anthrome Culture
Ever since Navin Ramankutty and I introduced anthromes in our 2008 paper, “Putting people in the map”, I’ve been working to shift global thinking on people and nature. Today, our PNAS paper “People have shaped most of terrestrial nature for at least 12,000 years” presents evidence supporting a new paradigm for global ecology and conservation. Our work confirms, through a […]
Welcome to the New Anthroecology Site!
After more than 20 years at ecotope.org, we now have a new home at anthroecology.org. We are now The Anthroecology Lab, changed from the Laboratory for Anthropogenic Landscape Ecology. The old site served us well over the years, but it used old web technology, and though we still study the ecology of anthropogenic landscapes, our focus on anthromes and anthroecology […]
UMBC Presidential Research Professor
I’m so happy to be the UMBC Presidential Research Professor for 2021-2024! A huge thank you to all of you who made this possible – there are so many! And especially those who encouraged me to apply for this, with a special shout out to Dr. Christine Mallinson, Director of the Center for Social Science Scholarship, my department chair, Alan […]
The First Online Collaborative Global Assessment of Archaeological Knowledge on Land Use
The ArchaeoGLOBE Project is a “massively collaborative effort” (see Gowers & Nielsen 2009) to assess archaeological knowledge on human land use across the globe over the past 10,000 years. The project recruited a broad network of archaeologists to share expert knowledge on past land use across 146 regions spanning all continents except Antarctica, through a questionnaire on regional land use in 10 […]
Dear Anthropocene Working Group (about that Comment in Nature)
In the interests of transparency and to clarify that my critique of the Anthropocene formalization process is not a critique of the people of Anthropocene Working Group (AWG) of which I am a member, I’ve decided to post my email to the AWG informing them of my recent Comment in Nature. I’ve edited very slightly: Dear Anthropocene Working Group,I am sending the […]
What Time is it? Early Anthropocene @theAGU & Straw Poll
It was a great week at the American Geophysical Union(AGU) Meeting in San Francisco, especially with the many sessions sponsored by IGBP – the international scientific program that brought you the Anthropocene– as part of its transition to Future Earth. I gave a talk on the emergence of humans as a global force in the Earth System based on my recent […]
Anthroecology: A New Synthesis
Why did behaviorally modern humans and no other multicellular species in the history of the Earth gain the capacity to transform an entire planet? Biology alone cannot explain this – Homo sapiens is just another species in the genus Homo with a few distinctive traits- not including stone tools (common to all species in the genus) and fire (common to […]