J Zalasiewicz
Biographic Data
| ID | 45490 |
|---|---|
| NAME | J Zalasiewicz |
| GIVEN NAMES | J |
| FAMILY NAME | Zalasiewicz |
| SIGNATURE | ZALASIEWICZ J |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Leicester |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-3220-4855 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 38 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 729 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 38 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2008 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 11 |
The Anthropocene as a conceptual tool for education
In a world where facts are contested, the conceptual tool of the Anthropocene epoch – that is, the dramatic and clearly demonstrable ways humans have changed the Earth system trajectory since the mid-20th century – provides real value for society in general and for education in particular. As a unifying concept, it helps us (a) understand the transformed bioclimatic conditions in which we live, (b) appreciate how fragile they are, how rapidly the…
Response to Damianos—Anthropocene angst
Damianos provides his views on the significance of the March 2024 decision by the International Commission on Stratigraphy (ICS) to reject the proposal of the Anthropocene Working Group (AWG), the body we represent, to formalize the Anthropocene as a series/epoch of the Geological Time Scale. He draws upon ‘four years of ethnographic observation’ of the AWG, over which time this body provided him with access to its meetings and discussions. Given…
Reorganizing public value for city life in the Anthropocene
Public value and city governance are fundamental notions in contemporary settings, but, currently conceived, they are not fit for the challenges presented by the proposed new epoch of geological time—the Anthropocene. Walking through the locked-down streets or calle of Venice, we face the sudden emptiness that starkly reveals the impact of human activity on the city and its waterways. Reflecting on the walk, our starting point is to problematize …
A Far-Future Paleontology
A Far-Future Paleontology: The Baffling Case of Brunaspis enigmatica Anne-Sophie Milon (bio) and Jan Zalasiewicz (bio) Paleontologists, for more than two centuries, have studied and debated the petrified remains of plants and animals that have evolved over the past three billion years on Earth. They have argued over the grand concepts that they reveal, such as biological evolution and climate change, and also the many specific questions thrown up…
Candidate sites and other reference sections for the Global boundary Stratotype Section and Point of the Anthropocene series
We review and compare proposals for 12 reference sections submitted to the Anthropocene Working Group of the International Subcommission on Quaternary Stratigraphy, of which one will be recommended as the Global boundary Stratotype Section and Point (GSSP) to define the base of the Anthropocene as a series within the Geological Time Scale. The sites span five continents and are located in diverse environments, with all but one sampled by coring. …
Evidence and experiment
Together with research teams from around the world, the Anthropocene Working Group (AWG) has been meticulously quantifying and scrutinizing the global stratigraphic imprint of human activities, the results of which are gathered in this thematic collection of papers in The Anthropocene Review. How can such empirical research, which so impressively articulates the end of a relatively stable Earth System in the mid-20th century, inform our ways of u…
The San Francisco Estuary, USA as a reference section for the Anthropocene series
A San Francisco Estuary core was analysed at high resolution to assess its component stratigraphic signatures of the Anthropocene in the form of non-native species, Hg, spheroidal carbonaceous particles, δ13Corg, δ15N, radiogenic materials, and heavy metals. Time series analysis of the core using Ti data provides a chronology to depth 167 cm into the 1960s. Below this, to depth 230 cm, the lowermost part of the core may extend to the 1950s or pot…
Geological evolution of the Mississippi River into the Anthropocene
The Mississippi River maintains commercial and societal networks of the USA along its >3700 km length. It has accumulated a fluvial sedimentary succession over 80 million years. Through the last 11,700 years of the Holocene Epoch, the wild river shaped the landscape, models of which have become classic in geological studies of ancient river strata. Studies of the river were led by the need to develop infrastructure and to search for hydrocarbons,…
An Anthropocene Landscape
Commentary on the “Anthropocene in Chile” Manifesto
Geology
Geology: A Very Short Introduction provides a concise introduction to the fascinating field of geology. Describing how the science began, it looks at the key discoveries that have transformed it, before delving into the modern science and its various subfields, such as sedimentology, tectonics, and stratigraphy. Analysing the geological foundations of the Earth, this VSI explains the interlocking studies of tectonics, geophysics, igneous and meta…
Geological fieldwork
The rare, exotic, and wonderful has been one of the great attractions of geology, often being the ‘hook’ that initially attracted the attention of many a geological enthusiast. Dating back to at least Greek and Roman times, explorers went in search of mammoth and dinosaur bones, and prospectors targeted precious gems and metal ores. ‘Geological fieldwork’ explains, though, that systematically working out the total geology of a landscape requires …
The Working Group on the Anthropocene
Scale and diversity of the physical technosphere
We assess the scale and extent of the physical technosphere, defined here as the summed material output of the contemporary human enterprise. It includes active urban, agricultural and marine components, used to sustain energy and material flow for current human life, and a growing residue layer, currently only in small part recycled back into the active component. Preliminary estimates suggest a technosphere mass of approximately 30 trillion ton…
Petrifying Earth Process
The Anthropocene concept arose within the Earth System science (ESS) community, albeit explicitly as a geological (stratigraphical) time term. Its current analysis by the stratigraphical community, as a potential formal addition to the Geological Time Scale, necessitates comparison of the methodologies and patterns of enquiry of these two communities. One means of comparison is to consider some of the most widely used results of the ESS, the 'pla…
Les strates de la ville de l'Anthropocène
Le tissu d'une ville correspond à une transformation de matériaux géologiques bruts en un assemblage complexe de nouveaux minéraux, fabriqués par des humains, et de roches, telles que l'acier, le verre, le plastique, le béton, la brique et la céramique. Cette activité est considérée en termes de ' métabolisme urbain ', avec des afflux et des flux quotidiens de personnes, de nourriture, d'eau et de déchets. Empruntée aux temps géologiques, une éch…
The Anthropocene is functionally and stratigraphically distinct from the Holocene
Evidence of an Anthropocene epoch Humans are undoubtedly altering many geological processes on Earth—and have been for some time. But what is the stratigraphic evidence for officially distinguishing this new human-dominated time period, termed the “Anthropocene,” from the preceding Holocene epoch? Waters et al. review climatic, biological, and geochemical signatures of human activity in sediments and ice cores. Combined with deposits of new mater…
Rocks
Rocks underpin our lives: they make up the solid structure of the Earth. We live on the rocky surface of the planet; grow our food on weathered debris derived from rocks; and we obtain nearly all of the raw materials with which we founded our civilization from rocks. Rocks: A Very Short Introduction looks at the nature and variety of rocks and the processes by which they are formed. It considers what we know about the deep rocks of the mantle and…
The geological cycle of plastics and their use as a stratigraphic indicator of the Anthropocene
Geology and the Anthropocene
It is useful to have Todd Braje's perspective on the Anthropocene. As he states, it is a concept that has spread widely and that has had various interpretations (within not just the sciences, but the arts and humanities too) in the 15 years since Paul Crutzen and Eugene Stoermer proposed the term (Crutzen & Stoermer 2000). Various suggestions are made in Braje's paper: perhaps foremost is that the Anthropocene should be retained as a loosely defi…
When did the Anthropocene begin? A mid-twentieth century boundary level is stratigraphically optimal
The Anthropocene biosphere
The geological record preserves evidence for two fundamental stages in the evolution of Earth's biosphere, a microbial stage from ~3.5 to 0.65 Ga, and a metazoan stage evident by c. 650 Ma. We suggest that the modern biosphere differs significantly from these previous stages and shows early signs of a new, third stage of biosphere evolution characterised by: (1) global homogenisation of flora and fauna; (2) a single species ( Homo sapiens) comman…
Colonization of the Americas, 'Little Ice Age' climate, and bomb-produced carbon
A recently published analysis by Lewis and Maslin (Lewis SL and Maslin MA (2015) Defining the Anthropocene. Nature 519: 171-180) has identified two new potential horizons for the Holocene−Anthropocene boundary: 1610 (associated with European colonization of the Americas), or 1964 (the peak of the excess radiocarbon signal arising from atom bomb tests). We discuss both of these novel suggestions, and consider that there is insufficient stratigraph…
Human bioturbation, and the subterranean landscape of the Anthropocene
Humans as the third evolutionary stage of biosphere engineering of rivers
When did the Anthropocene begin? A mid-twentieth century boundary level is stratigraphically optimal
The Anthropocene
The Working Group on the Anthropocene
The geological cycle of plastics and their use as a stratigraphic indicator of the Anthropocene
The technofossil record of humans
As humans have colonised and modified the Earth's surface, they have developed progressively more sophisticated tools and technologies. These underpin a new kind of stratigraphy, that we term technostratigraphy, marked by the geologically accelerated evolution and diversification of technofossils - the preservable material remains of the technosphere (Haff, 2013), driven by human purpose and transmitted cultural memory, and with the dynamics of a…
Scale and diversity of the physical technosphere
We assess the scale and extent of the physical technosphere, defined here as the summed material output of the contemporary human enterprise. It includes active urban, agricultural and marine components, used to sustain energy and material flow for current human life, and a growing residue layer, currently only in small part recycled back into the active component. Preliminary estimates suggest a technosphere mass of approximately 30 trillion ton…
Human bioturbation, and the subterranean landscape of the Anthropocene
Colonization of the Americas, 'Little Ice Age' climate, and bomb-produced carbon
A recently published analysis by Lewis and Maslin (Lewis SL and Maslin MA (2015) Defining the Anthropocene. Nature 519: 171-180) has identified two new potential horizons for the Holocene−Anthropocene boundary: 1610 (associated with European colonization of the Americas), or 1964 (the peak of the excess radiocarbon signal arising from atom bomb tests). We discuss both of these novel suggestions, and consider that there is insufficient stratigraph…
Candidate sites and other reference sections for the Global boundary Stratotype Section and Point of the Anthropocene series
We review and compare proposals for 12 reference sections submitted to the Anthropocene Working Group of the International Subcommission on Quaternary Stratigraphy, of which one will be recommended as the Global boundary Stratotype Section and Point (GSSP) to define the base of the Anthropocene as a series within the Geological Time Scale. The sites span five continents and are located in diverse environments, with all but one sampled by coring. …
The Anthropocene biosphere
The geological record preserves evidence for two fundamental stages in the evolution of Earth's biosphere, a microbial stage from ~3.5 to 0.65 Ga, and a metazoan stage evident by c. 650 Ma. We suggest that the modern biosphere differs significantly from these previous stages and shows early signs of a new, third stage of biosphere evolution characterised by: (1) global homogenisation of flora and fauna; (2) a single species ( Homo sapiens) comman…
Petrifying Earth Process
The Anthropocene concept arose within the Earth System science (ESS) community, albeit explicitly as a geological (stratigraphical) time term. Its current analysis by the stratigraphical community, as a potential formal addition to the Geological Time Scale, necessitates comparison of the methodologies and patterns of enquiry of these two communities. One means of comparison is to consider some of the most widely used results of the ESS, the 'pla…
The Anthropocene Review
Human activities now play a major, integral and ever-increasing role in the functioning of the Earth System. This fact lies at the heart of the notion of the Anthropocene. Documenting, understanding and responding to the present and future challenges posed by the recent, dramatic changes in the relationship between humans and their environment thus becomes an imperative for human society. This editorial presents the rationale for engaging with th…
Evidence and experiment
Together with research teams from around the world, the Anthropocene Working Group (AWG) has been meticulously quantifying and scrutinizing the global stratigraphic imprint of human activities, the results of which are gathered in this thematic collection of papers in The Anthropocene Review. How can such empirical research, which so impressively articulates the end of a relatively stable Earth System in the mid-20th century, inform our ways of u…
Geological evolution of the Mississippi River into the Anthropocene
The Mississippi River maintains commercial and societal networks of the USA along its >3700 km length. It has accumulated a fluvial sedimentary succession over 80 million years. Through the last 11,700 years of the Holocene Epoch, the wild river shaped the landscape, models of which have become classic in geological studies of ancient river strata. Studies of the river were led by the need to develop infrastructure and to search for hydrocarbons,…
Geology and the Anthropocene
It is useful to have Todd Braje's perspective on the Anthropocene. As he states, it is a concept that has spread widely and that has had various interpretations (within not just the sciences, but the arts and humanities too) in the 15 years since Paul Crutzen and Eugene Stoermer proposed the term (Crutzen & Stoermer 2000). Various suggestions are made in Braje's paper: perhaps foremost is that the Anthropocene should be retained as a loosely defi…
The San Francisco Estuary, USA as a reference section for the Anthropocene series
A San Francisco Estuary core was analysed at high resolution to assess its component stratigraphic signatures of the Anthropocene in the form of non-native species, Hg, spheroidal carbonaceous particles, δ13Corg, δ15N, radiogenic materials, and heavy metals. Time series analysis of the core using Ti data provides a chronology to depth 167 cm into the 1960s. Below this, to depth 230 cm, the lowermost part of the core may extend to the 1950s or pot…
Les strates de la ville de l'Anthropocène
Le tissu d'une ville correspond à une transformation de matériaux géologiques bruts en un assemblage complexe de nouveaux minéraux, fabriqués par des humains, et de roches, telles que l'acier, le verre, le plastique, le béton, la brique et la céramique. Cette activité est considérée en termes de ' métabolisme urbain ', avec des afflux et des flux quotidiens de personnes, de nourriture, d'eau et de déchets. Empruntée aux temps géologiques, une éch…
Rocks
Rocks underpin our lives: they make up the solid structure of the Earth. We live on the rocky surface of the planet; grow our food on weathered debris derived from rocks; and we obtain nearly all of the raw materials with which we founded our civilization from rocks. Rocks: A Very Short Introduction looks at the nature and variety of rocks and the processes by which they are formed. It considers what we know about the deep rocks of the mantle and…
Humans as the third evolutionary stage of biosphere engineering of rivers
The Earth after us
"Jan Zalasiewicz shows how scientists put together clues from the rocks to understand the past, its landscapes and climate, and the nature of the creatures that inhabited it. A thin layer of silt here, a trace formed by a crawling worm there - the clues are often subtle and difficult to read. But by such clues would future geologists - whether hyper-evolved rat or alien visitor - work out our story. Zalasiewicz explores which of our structures ar…
Echoes
It would seem to be like searching for a needle in a haystack. One hundred million years on, strata containing recognizable fossils of multicellular creatures will extend through a 640-million-year span in time, and will have piled up, in total, to many kilometres in thickness. Somewhere in those endless stretches of rock might be the layer in which traces of humanity may be preserved, awaiting discovery by our curious visitors. Would they happen…
Meeting the People
If one has found the ruins of an ancient civilization on a distant planet, and the skeletal remains of some of the civilization-builders amid those ruins, there would follow a flood of questions—if the discoverers possess anything like human levels of curiosity, that is—about just what these beings were like. War-like and aggressive, or peaceful and harmonious? Socially cohesive and communicative, or individualistic? Sedentary or highly mobile? R…
Are we now living in the Anthropocene
The term Anthropocene, proposed and increasingly employed to denote the current interval of anthropogenic global environmental change, may be discussed on stratigraphic grounds. A case can be made for its consideration as a formal epoch in that, since the start of the Industrial Revolution, Earth has endured changes sufficient to leave a global stratigraphic signature distinct from that of the Holocene or of previous Pleistocene interglacial phas…
The New World of the Anthropocene
The Anthropocene, following the lost world of the Holocene, holds challenges for both science and society.
The Anthropocene
Anthropogenic changes to the Earth’s climate, land, oceans and biosphere are now so great and so rapid that the concept of a new geological epoch defined by the action of humans, the Anthropocene, is widely and seriously debated. Questions of the scale, magnitude and significance of this environmental change, particularly in the context of the Earth’s geological history, provide the basis for this Theme Issue. The Anthropocene, on current evidenc…
Stratigraphy of the Anthropocene
The Anthropocene, an informal term used to signal the impact of collective human activity on biological, physical and chemical processes on the Earth system, is assessed using stratigraphic criteria. It is complex in time, space and process, and may be considered in terms of the scale, relative timing, duration and novelty of its various phenomena. The lithostratigraphic signal includes both direct components, such as urban constructions and man-…
The Anthropocene
The Goldilocks Planet
Climate change is a major topic of concern today and will be so for the foreseeable future, as predicted changes in global temperatures, rainfall, and sea level continue to take place. But as Jan Zalasiewicz and Mark Williams reveal in The Goldilocks Planet, the climatic changes we are experiencing today hardly compare to the changes the Earth has seen over the last 4.5 billion years. Indeed, the vast history that the authors relate here is drama…
The Last of the Warmth
The Pan-American Highway rises in the far north of the Americas at Prudhoe Bay, Alaska and, except for a small gap in Panama, runs the entire length of the two American continents to terminate at Ushuaia in southernmost Argentina. Along its way it travels nearly 50,000 kilometres, from the polar landscape of the far north, through the boreal forests of Canada, the temperate plains and hot deserts of the USA and Mexico, and on further into the tro…
Birth and Death of the Holocene
It is just the latest of many climate phases of the Quaternary Period. The 103rd major shift in climate-driven global oxygen isotope values, to be precise, since the official-designated beginning of the Quaternary Period, 2.58 million years ago. And, many of those major phases, as we have seen, include dozens of climate oscillations far greater in scale than humans have witnessed since written records began. Nevertheless, it is our warm phase, th…
The Anthropocene Review
Human activities now play a major, integral and ever-increasing role in the functioning of the Earth System. This fact lies at the heart of the notion of the Anthropocene. Documenting, understanding and responding to the present and future challenges posed by the recent, dramatic changes in the relationship between humans and their environment thus becomes an imperative for human society. This editorial presents the rationale for engaging with th…
Human bioturbation, and the subterranean landscape of the Anthropocene
Humans as the third evolutionary stage of biosphere engineering of rivers
The technofossil record of humans
As humans have colonised and modified the Earth's surface, they have developed progressively more sophisticated tools and technologies. These underpin a new kind of stratigraphy, that we term technostratigraphy, marked by the geologically accelerated evolution and diversification of technofossils - the preservable material remains of the technosphere (Haff, 2013), driven by human purpose and transmitted cultural memory, and with the dynamics of a…
When did the Anthropocene begin? A mid-twentieth century boundary level is stratigraphically optimal
The Anthropocene biosphere
The geological record preserves evidence for two fundamental stages in the evolution of Earth's biosphere, a microbial stage from ~3.5 to 0.65 Ga, and a metazoan stage evident by c. 650 Ma. We suggest that the modern biosphere differs significantly from these previous stages and shows early signs of a new, third stage of biosphere evolution characterised by: (1) global homogenisation of flora and fauna; (2) a single species ( Homo sapiens) comman…
Colonization of the Americas, 'Little Ice Age' climate, and bomb-produced carbon
A recently published analysis by Lewis and Maslin (Lewis SL and Maslin MA (2015) Defining the Anthropocene. Nature 519: 171-180) has identified two new potential horizons for the Holocene−Anthropocene boundary: 1610 (associated with European colonization of the Americas), or 1964 (the peak of the excess radiocarbon signal arising from atom bomb tests). We discuss both of these novel suggestions, and consider that there is insufficient stratigraph…
The Anthropocene is functionally and stratigraphically distinct from the Holocene
Evidence of an Anthropocene epoch Humans are undoubtedly altering many geological processes on Earth—and have been for some time. But what is the stratigraphic evidence for officially distinguishing this new human-dominated time period, termed the “Anthropocene,” from the preceding Holocene epoch? Waters et al. review climatic, biological, and geochemical signatures of human activity in sediments and ice cores. Combined with deposits of new mater…
Rocks
Rocks underpin our lives: they make up the solid structure of the Earth. We live on the rocky surface of the planet; grow our food on weathered debris derived from rocks; and we obtain nearly all of the raw materials with which we founded our civilization from rocks. Rocks: A Very Short Introduction looks at the nature and variety of rocks and the processes by which they are formed. It considers what we know about the deep rocks of the mantle and…
The geological cycle of plastics and their use as a stratigraphic indicator of the Anthropocene
Geology and the Anthropocene
It is useful to have Todd Braje's perspective on the Anthropocene. As he states, it is a concept that has spread widely and that has had various interpretations (within not just the sciences, but the arts and humanities too) in the 15 years since Paul Crutzen and Eugene Stoermer proposed the term (Crutzen & Stoermer 2000). Various suggestions are made in Braje's paper: perhaps foremost is that the Anthropocene should be retained as a loosely defi…
The Working Group on the Anthropocene
Scale and diversity of the physical technosphere
We assess the scale and extent of the physical technosphere, defined here as the summed material output of the contemporary human enterprise. It includes active urban, agricultural and marine components, used to sustain energy and material flow for current human life, and a growing residue layer, currently only in small part recycled back into the active component. Preliminary estimates suggest a technosphere mass of approximately 30 trillion ton…
Petrifying Earth Process
The Anthropocene concept arose within the Earth System science (ESS) community, albeit explicitly as a geological (stratigraphical) time term. Its current analysis by the stratigraphical community, as a potential formal addition to the Geological Time Scale, necessitates comparison of the methodologies and patterns of enquiry of these two communities. One means of comparison is to consider some of the most widely used results of the ESS, the 'pla…
Anthropocene (25 works) · Geology (18 works) · Earth science (17 works) · Geology (15 works) · Archaeology (14 works) · Geography (14 works) · Paleontology (14 works) · Geology and Paleoclimatology Research (13 works) · History (13 works) · Paleontology (12 works)