Anthropocene – New Epoch 29/05/2019 – Posted in: Daily News – Tags: ,

ANTHROPOCENE – NEW EPOCH

 

For: Preliminary & Mains

Topic covers: New Anthropocene epoch and phenomena

 

News Flash

Recently, panel of the Anthropocene Working Group (AWG) voted in favour of designating a new geological epoch — the Anthropocene.

  • Arrival of new epoch signals the end of the Holocene Epoch, which began 11,700 years ago.
  • The panel plans to submit a formal proposal for the new epoch by 2021 to the International Commission on Stratigraphy, which oversees the official geologic time chart.
  • The final ratification will be made by the executive committee of the International Union of Geological Sciences.

 

Anthropocene Epoch

The term ‘Anthropocene’ was coined in 2000 by Nobel Laureate Paul Crutzen and Eugene Stoermer to denote the present geological time interval in which human activity has profoundly altered many conditions and processes on Earth.

The Anthropocene defines Earth’s most recent geologic time period as being human-influenced, or anthropogenic, based on overwhelming global evidence that atmospheric, geologic, hydrologic, biospheric and other earth system processes are now altered by humans.

The word combines the root “anthropo”, meaning “human” with the root “-cene”, the standard suffix for “epoch” in geologic time.

 

Anthropocene Phenomena

The phenomena associated with the Anthropocene include an order-of-magnitude increase in erosion and sediment transport associated with urbanisation and agriculture, marked and abrupt anthropogenic perturbations of the cycles of elements such as carbon, environmental changes generated by these perturbations, including global warming, sea-level rise, and ocean acidification, rapid changes in the biosphere and finally proliferation and global dispersion of many new ‘minerals’ and ‘rocks’ including concrete, fly ash and plastics, and the myriad ‘technofossils’ produced from these and other materials.

 

 

Geological time scale of Earth

The geologic time scale is a system of chronological dating that relates geological strata to time. It is used by geologists, paleontologists, and other Earth scientists to describe the timing and relationships of events that have occurred during Earth’s history.

 

Source: The Hindu

 

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