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 […]
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 […]
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, […]
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.
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 […]
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 […]
Is the Anthropocene recent? Defined solely by the accelerating impacts of an industrial society that threatens the future of both humanity and the biosphere (Barnosky et al., 2012, Rockstrom et al., 2009)? A closer look at the history of human use of land yields a very different story. Today in PNAS, my colleagues and I present a new global history of […]
What are we humans doing to biodiversity in the Anthropocene? Causing Earth’s sixth mass extinction? (e.g. Barnosky et al. 2011 and others). How about something completely new to biodiversity on this planet? How about a massive globalization of species leading to the widespread emergence of novel ecosystems enriched with exotic and domesticated species (Hobbs et al. 2009). That’s the main […]
What happens when a talented science writer brings together a diverse group of ecologists and conservationists chasing a new vision of nature? If that writer is Emma Marris, the answer is: Rambunctious Garden– a new book to be released this September 1. Using her great gift for storytelling, Marris tours the reader through the contemporary ecological labyrinth that constitutes “saving […]
If media attention is any measure of popular thinking- then we have indeed finally arrived in the Anthropocene. Thanks to the leadership (and hard work) of Jan Zalasiewicz, who initiated and convened the Anthropocene Working Group of the International in London two weeks ago, there has been a true media feeding frenzy on the Anthropocene (see recent media roundup below). […]
“Global warming is essentially forever.” states David Archer in a nice blog post at fast company about the long-term effects of our current carbon emissions to the atmosphere. Yet more evidence that the Anthropocene is here to stay. Reminds me of one of my first blog posts – Is managing global climate now our duty? Just as we’ve made the […]
The Early Anthropocene Hypothesis holds that human alteration of climate began with forest clearing and rice production more than 6 thousand years ago. Here are my personal impressions of recent work supporting this hypothesis, from last week’s annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union (AGU) in San Francisco (a conference of 15,000- so big its like Woodstock for Earth scientists). […]