The Anthropocene: a new epoch of geological time?

Zalasiewicz, Jan; Williams, Mark; Haywood, Alan M.; Ellis, Michael A.

doi:10.1098/rsta.2010.0339

Cited by 481 publications

(250 citation statements)

References 23 publications

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“…R. Soc. B 282: 20142990 with the Industrial Revolution [43][44][45]. However, other authors suggested that anthropogenic changes may have begun in the Early Holocene [46] or even the latest Pleistocene [47], and a compelling case has been made for the pre-industrial roots of anthropogenic alterations in the global marine ecosystem [7].…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Differential responses of marine communities to natural and anthropogenic changes

et al. 2015

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Responses of ecosystems to environmental changes vary greatly across habitats, organisms and observational scales. The Quaternary fossil record of the Po Basin demonstrates that marine communities of the northern Adriatic reemerged unchanged following the most recent glaciation, which lasted approximately 100 000 years. The Late Pleistocene and Holocene interglacial ecosystems were both dominated by the same species, species turnover rates approximated predictions of resampling models of a homogeneous system, and comparable bathymetric gradients in species composition, sample-level diversity, dominance and specimen abundance were observed in both time intervals. The interglacial Adriatic ecosystems appear to have been impervious to natural climate change either owing to their persistence during those long-term perturbations or their resilient recovery during interglacial phases of climate oscillations. By contrast, present-day communities of the northern Adriatic differ notably from their Holocene counterparts. The recent ecosystem shift stands in contrast to the long-term endurance of interglacial communities in face of climate-driven environmental changes.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Differential responses of marine communities to natural and anthropogenic changes

et al. 2015

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“…The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (Parry et al, 2007) stated bluntly: "The resilience of many ecosystems is likely to be exceeded this century by an unprecedented combination of climate change, associated disturbances (e.g., flooding, drought, wildfire, insects, ocean acidification), and other global change drivers (e.g., land use change, pollution, overexploitation of resources)". The human species has become so dominant that some argue we have entered a new geological age dominated not by the chemical and physical workings of the earth as they exist under their own motion from time to time but by us humans and they propose we call this new period the Anthropocene (Zalasiewicz et al, 2011). This is not new.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Nature needs half: a necessary and hopeful new agenda for protected areas

Locke¹

2013

PARKS

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Conservation targets should be based on what is necessary to protect nature in all its expressions. When in 1988 the Brundtland report called for tripling the world's protected area estate (which was then at 3 to 4 per cent of the land area) there was a strong belief that sustainable development would ensure the proper care for nature on the rest of the unprotected earth. This has proven wrong. We therefore must materially shift our protected areas target to protect at least half of the world, land and water, in an interconnected way to conform with what conservation biologists have learned about the needs of nature. Instead we have set goals that are politically determined, with arbitrary percentages that rest on an unarticulated hope that such non-scientific goals are a good first step towards some undefined better future outcome. This has been a destructive form of self-censorship. It is time for conservationists to reset the debate based on scientific findings and assert nature's needs fearlessly.

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“…This increasing global footprint of human activities on the biosphere has led some to use the term 'the Anthropocene' , to denote the present period of anthropogenically induced global environmental change 3 . The ongoing oceanic absorption of atmospheric CO 2 has helped to restrict present global warming by reducing the total amount of manmade CO 2 in the atmosphere.…”

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confidence: 99%

Species-specific responses to ocean acidification should account for local adaptation and adaptive plasticity

et al. 2017

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Global stressors, such as ocean acidification, constitute a rapidly emerging and significant problem for marine organisms, ecosystem functioning and services. The coastal ecosystems of the Humboldt Current System (HCS) off Chile harbour a broad physical-chemical latitudinal and temporal gradient with considerable patchiness in local oceanographic conditions. This heterogeneity may, in turn, modulate the specific tolerances of organisms to climate stress in species with populations distributed along this environmental gradient. Negative response ratios are observed in species models (mussels, gastropods and planktonic copepods) exposed to changes in the partial pressure of CO 2 (p CO2 ) far from the average and extreme p CO2 levels experienced in their native habitats. This variability in response between populations reveals the potential role of local adaptation and/or adaptive phenotypic plasticity in increasing resilience of species to environmental change. The growing use of standard ocean acidification scenarios and treatment levels in experimental protocols brings with it a danger that inter-population differences are confounded by the varying environmental conditions naturally experienced by different populations. Here, we propose the use of a simple index taking into account the natural p CO2 variability, for a better interpretation of the potential consequences of ocean acidification on species inhabiting variable coastal ecosystems. Using scenarios that take into account the natural variability will allow understanding of the limits to plasticity across organismal traits, populations and species.

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The Anthropocene: a new epoch of geological time?

Cited by 481 publications

References 23 publications

Differential responses of marine communities to natural and anthropogenic changes

Differential responses of marine communities to natural and anthropogenic changes

Nature needs half: a necessary and hopeful new agenda for protected areas

Species-specific responses to ocean acidification should account for local adaptation and adaptive plasticity

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