Defining the beginning of the Anthropocene has been controversial. Now, an international team of experts has concluded that this new geological period – which marks the beginning of humanity’s irreversible impact on the planet – can be seen globally in the top layer of sediments on Earth’s surface from the 1950s onwards.
Humans began to have powerful effects on the planet with the advent of large-scale agriculture and the Industrial Revolution, but none of these events happened all over the world at the same time. The period was marked by the appearance of plutonium, a radioactive element used in nuclear weapons, as well as other indications of increased human activity, classified as the “Great Acceleration”.
The chair of the Anthropocene Working Group (AWG), Colin Waters, says the abrupt changes are an indelible sign of human impact, the so-called “golden rush”. “Having the plutonium marker is a very useful tool that allows these limits to be defined. We also have all these other markers that reflect the big changes that occurred on the planet during the Great Acceleration: increased fossil fuel consumption, increased use of nitrogen fertilizers, increased global trade spreading species around planet and for the homogeneity of organisms on the planet, “says the professor, Quoted from Sky News.
Gary Hirschhorn
AWG scientists have named Crawford Lake, near Toronto, Canada, an official global observation site for the Anthropocene. The lake is 24 meters deep but has a small surface area, which means the muddy bottom is undisturbed.
“The bottom of the lake is completely cut off from the rest of the planet, except for what sinks gently to the bottom and accumulates sediment,” explains AWG’s Francine McCarthy. The bottom of the lake is a chronological record of the planet’s environmental changes over thousands of years.
Plutonium from atmospheric nuclear weapons tests suddenly appears in sediments in the mid-20th century. There are also traces of microplastics, ash from coal-fired power plants and concentrations of heavy metals such as lead.
We are currently living in the Holocene, which began about 11,700 years ago, when the climate became more stable. The declaration of a new Anthropocene epoch and the use of Lake Crawford as an observation site have not been approved by three other scientific bodies recognized as the official custodians of the geological record of time, According to Sky News.
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