News Release

Did the Anthropocene begin with the nuclear age?

Scientists identify July 16, 1945 as key time boundary in Earth history

Peer-Reviewed Publication

University of Leicester

Jan Zalasiewicz, University of Leicester

image: This is Dr. Jan Zalasiewicz of the University of Leicester Department of Geology. view more 

Credit: University of Leicester

An international group of scientists has proposed a start date for the dawn of the Anthropocene - a new chapter in the Earth's geological history.

Humans are having such a marked impact on the Earth that they are changing its geology, creating new and distinctive strata that will persist far into the future. This is the idea behind the Anthropocene, a new epoch in Earth history proposed by the Nobel Prize-winning atmospheric chemist Paul Crutzen just 15 years ago. Since then the idea has spread widely through both the sciences and humanities.

But if the Anthropocene is to be a geological epoch - when should it begin? Humans have long affected the environment, and ideas as to when the Anthropocene might start range from the thousands of years ago with the dawn of agriculture, to the Industrial Revolution - and even to the future (for the greatest human-made changes could still be to come).

Now, members of the international working group formally analysing the Anthropocene suggest that the key turning point happened in the mid-twentieth century. This was when humans did not just leave traces of their actions, but began to alter the whole Earth system. There was a 'Great Acceleration' of population, of carbon emissions, of species invasions and extinctions, of earth moving, of the production of concrete, plastics and metals.

It included the start, too, of the nuclear age, when artificial radionuclides were scattered across the Earth, from the poles to the Equator, to be leave a detectable signal in modern strata virtually everywhere.

The proposal, signed up to by 26 members of the working group, including lead author Dr Jan Zalasiewicz, who also chairs the working group, and Professor Mark Williams, both of the University of Leicester's Department of Geology, is that the beginning of the Anthropocene could be considered to be drawn at the moment of detonation of the world's first nuclear test: on July 16th 1945. The beginning of the nuclear age, it marks the historic turning point when humans first accessed an enormous new energy source - and is also a time level that can be effectively tracked within geological strata, using a variety of geological clues.

Dr Zalasiewicz said: "Like any geological boundary, it is not a perfect marker - levels of global radiation really rose in the early 1950s, as salvoes of bomb tests took place. But it may be the optimal way to resolve the multiple lines of evidence on human-driven planetary change. Time - and much more discussion - will tell."

This year, the Anthropocene Working Group will put together more evidence on the Anthropocene, including discussion of possible alternative time boundaries. In 2016, the group aims to make recommendations on whether this new time unit should be formalized and, if so, how it might be defined and characterised.

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Notes to editors:

For further information contact:

Dr. Jan Zalasiewicz jaz1@le.ac.uk

Professor Mark Williams mri@le.ac.uk

You can access the article here: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1040618214009136

More information on the Anthropocene is available at:

http://quaternary.stratigraphy.org/workinggroups/anthropocene/

http://www.bgs.ac.uk/anthropocene/

Reference

Zalasiewicz, J., Waters, C.N., Williams, M., Barnosky, A.D., Cerreata, A., Crutzen, P., Ellis, E., Ellis, M.E., Fairchild, I.J., Grinevald, J., Haff, P.K., Hajdas, I., Leinfelder, R., McNeill, J., Odada, E.O., Poirier, C., Richter, D., Steffen, W., Summerhayes, C., Syvitski, J.P.M., Vidas, D., Wagreich, M., Wing, S.L., Wolfe, A.P., An, Z. & Oreskes, N. Published online. When did the Anthropocene begin? A mid-twentieth century boundary is stratigraphically optimal. Quaternary International.

The following institutions are represented on the paper:

Department of Geology, University of Leicester, University Road, Leicester LE1 7RH, UK
b British Geological Survey, Keyworth, Nottingham NG12 5GG, UK
c Dept. of Integrative Biology, Museum of Paleontology, Museum of Vertebrate Zoology, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA
d Departamento de Estratigrafía y Paleontología, Facultad de Ciencia y Tecnología, Universidad del País Vasco UPV/EHU, Apartado 644, 48080 Bilbao, Spain
e Max-Planck-Institute for Chemistry, Department of Atmospheric Chemistry, PO Box 3060, D-55020 Mainz, Germany
f Department of Geography and Environmental Systems, University of Maryland Baltimore County, Baltimore, MD 21250, USA
g School of Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences, University of Birmingham, B15 2TT, UK
h IHEID, Chemin Eug_ene Rigot 2, 1211 Gen_eve 11, Switzerland
i Division of Earth and Ocean Sciences, Nicholas School of the Environment, Duke University, Box 90233, Durham, NC 27516, USA
j ETH Zurich, Laboratory of Ion Beam Physics, HPK H27, Otto-Stern-Weg 5, CH-8093 Zürich, Switzerland
k Department of Geological Sciences, Freie Universit€at Berlin, Malteserstr. 74-100/D, 12249 Berlin, Germany
l Georgetown University, Washington, DC, USA
m Department of Geology, University of Nairobi, Kenya
n Morphodynamique Continentale et C^oti_ere, Universit_e de Caen Basse Normandie, CNRS, 24 rue des Tilleuls, F-14000 Caen, France
o Nicholas School of the Environment, Duke University, Durham, NC, USA
p The Australian National University, Canberra, ACT 0200, Australia
q Scott Polar Research Institute, Cambridge University, Lensfield Road, Cambridge CB2 1ER, UK
r University of Colorado-Boulder Campus, Box 545, Boulder, CO 80309-0545, USA
s Marine Affairs and Law of the Sea Programme, The Fridtjof Nansen Institute, Norway
t Department of Geodynamics and Sedimentology, University of Vienna, A-1090 Vienna, Austria
u Dept. of Paleobiology, NHB121, PO Box 37012, Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC, USA
v Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB T6G 2E3, Canada
w The Institute of the Earth Environment, Chinese Academy of Sciences, 10 Fenghui South Road, Xi'an High-Tech Zone, Xi'an 710075, China
x Department of the History of Science, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.quaint.2014.11.045


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