BIOL 150 Lecture Notes - Lecture 9: Anthropocene, Caesium, Plastic Bottle
Document Summary
International commission on stratigraphy is charged with designating geologic time periods. Issue with designating an anthropocene epoch has to do with finding a signature spike that humans are the change-makers . Technofossils are the things we manufacture that have the potential to survive for thousands, millions, perhaps billions of years in rock strata. Possible starting points for the anthropocene: changes to land use (deforestation, agriculture) are detectable in the geologic record with pollen records (80% of earth"s surface has been modified; 40% by food production). But: the most popular idea is to designate the beginning of the industrial revolution (1750) as the start point because that is when we started to change the earth"s chemistry (atmosphere and ocean) and alter geography . In 100,000 years people won"t look to the geologic record to learn about us. Starting with agriculture coincides with the start of the holocene, which already has a spike .
