Anthropocène

The concept of the Anthropocene refers to the profound human impact on not only landscape or the environment, but the overall dynamics of the Earth System. It can be understood in narrower and broader terms. Understood in a narrow sense, the term Anthropocene refers to a new ‘epoch’ of the Geologic Time Scale which has been proposed to replace our current epoch, the Holocene, in light of humanity’s footprint on the chronostratigraphic record. In a broader sense, the term Anthropocene refers to a vast set of research agendas in a range of humanities, social and natural sciences that seek to understand the unprecedented impact of human activities on the dynamics of the Earth System.