A formal Anthropocene is compatible with but distinct from its diachronous anthropogenic counterparts: a response to W.F. Ruddiman’s ‘three flaws in defining a formal Anthropocene’

Jan Zalasiewicz 1 Colin Waters 2 Martin Head 3 Clément Poirier 4 Colin Summerhayes 5 Reinhold Leinfelder 6 Jacques Grinevald 7 Will Steffen 8 Jaia Syvitski 9 Peter Haff 10 John Mcneill 11 Michael Wagreich 12 Ian Fairchild 13 Daniel Richter 14 Davor Vidas 15 Mark Williams 16 Anthony Barnosky 17 Alejandro Cearreta 18
1 Department of Geology [Leicester]
2 BGS - British Geological Survey
3 Brock University [Canada]
4 M2C - Morphodynamique Continentale et Côtière
5 CAM - University of Cambridge [UK]
6 Freie Universität Berlin
7 IHEID - Institut de hautes études internationales et du développement
8 ANU - Australian National University
9 University of Colorado [Boulder]
10 Duke University [Durham]
11 GU - Georgetown University [Washington]
12 University of Vienna [Vienna]
13 University of Birmingham [Birmingham]
14 Department of Human Evolution [Leipzig]
15 Fridtjof Nansen Institute of oceanology
16 Department of Geography [Leicester]
17 Stanford University [Stanford]
18 UPV/EHU - Universidad del Pais Vasco / Euskal Herriko Unibertsitatea [Espagne]
Abstract : We analyse the ‘three flaws’ to potentially defining a formal Anthropocene geological time unit as advanced by Ruddiman (2018). (1) We recognize a long record of pre-industrial human impacts, but note that these increased in relative magnitude slowly and were strongly time-transgressive by comparison with the extraordinarily rapid, novel and near-globally synchronous changes of post-industrial time. (2) The rules of stratigraphic nomenclature do not ‘reject’ pre-industrial anthropogenic signals – these have long been a key characteristic and distinguishing feature of the Holocene. (3) In contrast to the contention that classical chronostratigraphy is now widely ignored by scientists, it remains vital and widely used in unambiguously defining geological time units and is an indispensable part of the Earth sciences. A mounting body of evidence indicates that the Anthropocene, considered as a precisely defined geological time unit that begins in the mid-20th century, is sharply distinct from the Holocene.
Keywords : Anthropocene Holocene chronostratigraphy geological time scale Earth sciences
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https://hal-normandie-univ.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-02194153
Contributeur : Pierre Weill <>
Soumis le : jeudi 25 juillet 2019 - 11:38:47
Dernière modification le : mardi 20 août 2019 - 17:12:02

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Jan Zalasiewicz, Colin Waters, Martin Head, Clément Poirier, Colin Summerhayes, et al.. A formal Anthropocene is compatible with but distinct from its diachronous anthropogenic counterparts: a response to W.F. Ruddiman’s ‘three flaws in defining a formal Anthropocene’. Progress in Physical Geography, SAGE Publications, 2019, 43 (3), pp.319-333. ⟨10.1177/0309133319832607⟩. ⟨hal-02194153⟩

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