Man's Impact On The Planet Brings About New Epoch In Earth's HistoryScienceDaily
Geologists from the University of Portsmouth are proposing that humankind has so changed the earth that it has brought about an end to one epoch of earth’s history and marked the start of another. They believe that human dominance has so physically altered the earth that the Holocene epoch has ended and we have entered a new epoch - the Anthropocene.
Dr Andrew Gale of the University of Portsmouth and his colleagues on the Stratigraphy Commission of the Geological Society of London identified the major causes of human impact on the planet and discovered that the last 200 years had caused more impact then previously understood.
They examined phenomena such as changes in the patterns of sediment erosion and deposition, major disturbances to the carbon cycle and global temperature, ocean acidification and wholesale changes to the world’s plants and animals.
“Human activity has become the number one driver of most of the major changes in Earth's topography and climate, said Dr Gale. “You can’t have 6.5 billion people living on a planet the size of ours and exploiting every possible resource without creating huge changes in the physical, chemical and biological environment which will be reflected dramatically in our geological record of the planet.”
See: Man's Impact On The Planet Brings About New Epoch In Earth's History
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