The Anthropocene
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 23373394 |
|---|---|
| Authors | William F Ruddiman (University of Virginia, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2013 |
| Volume | 41 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 45-68 |
| Publication date | 2013-05-30 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Annual Review of Earth and Planetary Sciences (BOOK_SERIES) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0084-6597 • E-ISSN: 1545-4495 |
| Publisher | Annual Reviews (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1146/annurev-earth-050212-123944 |
| OpenAlex | W4249731328 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 132 |
| References cited | 38 |
The start of the period of large-scale human effects on this planet (the Anthropocene) is debated. The industrial view holds that most significant impacts have occurred since the early industrial era (∼1850), whereas the early-anthropogenic view recognizes large impacts thousands of years earlier. This review focuses on three indices of global-scale human influence: forest clearance (and related land use), emissions of greenhouse gases (CO 2 and CH 4 ), and effects on global temperature. Because reliable, systematic land-use surveys are rare prior to 1950, most reconstructions for early-industrial centuries and prior millennia are hind casts that assume humans have used roughly the same amount of land per person for 7,000 years. But this assumption is incorrect. Historical data and new archeological databases reveal much greater per-capita land use in preindustrial than in recent centuries. This early forest clearance caused much greater preindustrial greenhouse-gas emissions and global temperature changes than those proposed within the industrial paradigm.
Anthropocene · Economics · Geography · Greenhouse gas · Land use · Natural resource economics · Per capita · Period (music) · Physical geography · Archaeology and ancient environmental studies · Demography · Ecology · Environmental Science · Geology · Geology and Paleoclimatology Research · Oceanography · Pleistocene-Era Hominins and Archaeology
Iron Age landscape changes in the Benoué River Valley, Cameroon
Climate emergency
Que Civilização Importa No Extremo Do Mundo
Classificatory disputes and scientific controversies
Global environmental change
Patterns of Diversification and Extinction
Patterns of Diversification and Extinction
Anthropocene and Planetary Boundaries
Anthropocene and Planetary Boundaries
Anthropocene Epoch
The Open Veins of Modernity
An Anthropology of Deep Time
Soil and human security in the 21st century
Twenty-first century approaches to ancient problems
The Concept of the Anthropocene
The Anthropocene is functionally and stratigraphically distinct from the Holocene
Defining the Anthropocene
Comment on “When did the Anthropocene begin? A mid-twentieth century boundary is stratigraphically optimal” by Jan Zalasiewicz et al. (2015), Quaternary International, 383, 196–203
Global wetland contribution to 2000–2012 atmospheric methane growth rate dynamics
Ghosts of landuse past
Social scientific research on the American West
Rethinking Air Quality and Climate Change after Covid-19
Strong Fuzzy EHLFS
What If the ‘Anthropocene’ Is Not Formalized as a New Geological Series/Epoch
İkli̇m Kri̇zi̇ Çağinda Güncel Sanat Eği̇li̇mleri̇
Climate Change and Labor in a Globalized World
Dating the Dawn of the Anthropocene
Where the Meghalayan meets the Anthropocene
Can a pandemic stop or slow the Anthropocene
Palaeoenvironmental data indicate late quaternary anthropogenic impacts on vegetation and landscapes in Mzimba, northern Malawi
Planetary justice and ‘Healing’ in the Anthropocene
Archaeoecology of Neolithisation. Human-environment interactions in the NE Iberian Peninsula during the Early Neolithic
The Little Ice Age and the Coming of the Anthropocene
How geoarchaeology and landscape archaeology contribute to niche construction theory (NCT)
The prospect of global environmental relativities after an Anthropocene tipping point
Towards a donut regime? Domestic actors, climatization, and the hollowing-out of the international forests regime in the Anthropocene
How New are New Harms Really? Climate Change, Historical Reasoning and Social Change
The Role of Metallurgy in Transforming Global Forests
Tracking Hunter-Gatherer Impact on Vegetation in Last Interglacial and Holocene Europe
Paleoenvironmental Reconstruction from Faunal Remains
Earth Systems, Human Agency, and the Anthropocene
Spatial and temporal changes of prehistoric human land use in the Wei River valley, northern China
Copper content in anthropogenic sediments as a tracer for detecting smelting activities and its impact on environment during prehistoric period in Hexi Corridor, Northwest China
The humanized Earth system (HES)
Intensification of production in Medieval Islamic Jordan and its ecological impact
Zooarchaeological perspectives in the framework of the Anthropocene
Anthropogenic burning and the Anthropocene in late-Holocene California
Archaeology of the Anthropocene in the Yellow River region, China, 8000–2000 cal. BP
Comparing subsistence strategies in different landscapes of North China 10,000 years ago
On-site data cast doubts on the hypothesis of shifting cultivation in the late Neolithic (c. 4300–2400 cal. BC)
Anthropocene as Political Geology
The Social and Sociological Province of Climate Change
Fecal biomarker imprints as indicators of past human land uses
Reaching the human scale
Critical sustainability
Introduction
Penser l’Anthropocène
Paleozoology and Paleoenvironments
Past human-induced ecological legacies as a driver of modern Amazonian resilience
Geomorphological impact of short-term urbanisation on the alluvial-coastal plain of a Mediterranean military port city (La Spezia, Italy)
The imperative of planetary mental health
Political Theory on Climate Change
When did the Anthropocene begin? A mid-twentieth century boundary level is stratigraphically optimal
Re-conceptualizing the Anthropocene
Petrifying Earth Process
Dating the Anthropocene
Introduction to Special Theme Section “Accounting for Climate Change
In Search of (Just) Climate Urbanism
Introduction
Disjointed Times in “Climate-Smart” Amazonia
When does it pay to invest in a patch? The evolution of intentional niche construction
The Anthroposcenic
Evidence on the sustainable management of native agrobiodiversity in traditional Mexican markets
Intensification of rice farming and its environmental consequences recorded in a Liangzhu reservoir, China
Climate variability and sea level change during the Holocene
A Systems-based Tool for Transitioning to Law for a Mutually Enhancing Human-Earth Relationship
The Sustainability Dynamics Framework – A holistic approach to define and evaluate sustainability and unsustainability in the Anthropocene
Campfire Smoke and the Anthropocene
Archaeology in the age of the Anthropocene
The selfish machine? On the power and limitation of natural selection to understand the development of advanced AI
The new nature
On the relevance of the European Neolithic
Historical developments of Anthropocene concepts
Anthropocene/Anthroposcene
L’émancipation et ses limites en Anthropocène
Māori settlement of New Zealand
Theoretical and Socioecological Consequences of Fire Foodways
In praise of Geography as a field of study for the climate emergency
Human control of climate
Phytoliths and rice
Early historical forest clearance caused major degradation of water quality at Lake Væng, Denmark
The biodiversity of food and agriculture (Agrobiodiversity) in the anthropocene
Finding the anthropocene in tropical forests
The Working Group on the Anthropocene
Quantification of human-environment interactions in the past
Microbiology of the Anthropocene
Archeology and the Anthropocene
Shell middens and other anthropogenic soils as global stratigraphic signatures of the Anthropocene
The Palaeoanthropocene - The beginnings of anthropogenic environmental change
Human acceleration of animal and plant extinctions
The Anthropogenic Greenhouse Era Began Thousands of Years Ago
Northern Peatlands
A reconstruction of global agricultural areas and land cover for the last millennium
Estimating historical changes in global land cover
Estimating global land use change over the past 300 years
Combined climate and carbon-cycle effects of large-scale deforestation
Eight glacial cycles from an Antarctic ice core
The prehistoric and preindustrial deforestation of Europe
Anthropogenic transformation of the terrestrial biosphere
The conditions of agricultural growth
Holocene carbon emissions as a result of anthropogenic land cover change
The role of GCM resolution in simulating glacial inception
The contribution of rice agriculture and livestock pastoralism to prehistoric methane levels
Comparisons of atmosphere–ocean simulations of greenhouse gas-induced climate change for pre-industrial and hypothetical ‘no-anthropogenic’ radiative forcing, relative to present day
Can natural or anthropogenic explanations of late-Holocene CO 2 and CH 4 increases be falsified
Holocene carbon flux histories of the world’s peatlands
Population and Technological Change
The Anthropocene
The relationships of population and forest trends
Man and Land in Chinese History
Land Utilization in China
| Unique citing works | 132 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 10,15 |
| Citation span | 2013 - 2026 (14) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | Yes |
| Citation types | Neutral: 127 |