scholarly journals Impair-then-Repair: A Brief History & Global-Scale Hypothesis Regarding Human-Water Interactions in the Anthropocene

Daedalus ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 144 (3) ◽  
pp. 94-109 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charles J. Vörösmarty ◽  
Michel Meybeck ◽  
Christopher L. Pastore
Keyword(s):  
Water Management ◽  
Life Forms ◽  
Global Scale ◽  
Earth System ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Earth ◽  
Innovative Solutions ◽  
Underlying Causes ◽  
Management Schemes ◽  
Rich Countries

Water is an essential building block of the Earth system and a nonsubstitutable resource upon which humankind must depend. But a growing body of evidence shows that freshwater faces a pandemic array of challenges. Today we can observe a globally significant but collectively unorganized approach to addressing them. Under modern water management schemes, impairment accumulates with increasing wealth but is then remedied by costly, after-the-fact technological investments. This strategy of treating symptoms rather than underlying causes is practiced widely across rich countries but leaves poor nations and many of the world's freshwater life-forms at risk. The seeds of this modern “impair-then-repair” mentality for water management were planted long ago, yet the wisdom of our “water traditions” may be ill-suited to an increasingly crowded planet. Focusing on rivers, which collectively satisfy the bulk of the world's freshwater needs, this essay explores the past, present, and possible future of human-water interactions. We conclude by presenting the impair-then-repair paradigm as a testable, global-scale hypothesis with the aim of stimulating not only systematic study of the impairment process but also the search for innovative solutions. Such an endeavor must unite and cobalance perspectives from the natural sciences and the humanities.

scholarly journals Trajectories of the Earth System in the Anthropocene

2018 ◽  
Vol 115 (33) ◽  
pp. 8252-8259 ◽  
Author(s):  
Will Steffen ◽  
Johan Rockström ◽  
Katherine Richardson ◽  
Timothy M. Lenton ◽  
Carl Folke ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Global Economy ◽  
Human Action ◽  
Behavioral Changes ◽  
Earth System ◽  
New Governance ◽  
Sea Levels ◽  
Average Temperature ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Earth ◽  
Potential Threshold

We explore the risk that self-reinforcing feedbacks could push the Earth System toward a planetary threshold that, if crossed, could prevent stabilization of the climate at intermediate temperature rises and cause continued warming on a “Hothouse Earth” pathway even as human emissions are reduced. Crossing the threshold would lead to a much higher global average temperature than any interglacial in the past 1.2 million years and to sea levels significantly higher than at any time in the Holocene. We examine the evidence that such a threshold might exist and where it might be. If the threshold is crossed, the resulting trajectory would likely cause serious disruptions to ecosystems, society, and economies. Collective human action is required to steer the Earth System away from a potential threshold and stabilize it in a habitable interglacial-like state. Such action entails stewardship of the entire Earth System—biosphere, climate, and societies—and could include decarbonization of the global economy, enhancement of biosphere carbon sinks, behavioral changes, technological innovations, new governance arrangements, and transformed social values.

Workflow and tools to analyse the PMIP4-CMIP6 ensemble

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anni Zhao ◽  
Chris Brierley
Keyword(s):  
Case Studies ◽  
Coupled Model ◽  
Important Case ◽  
Earth System ◽  
Model Intercomparison ◽  
Past Climate ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Earth ◽  
Intercomparison Project

<p>Experiment outputs are now available from the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project’s 6<sup>th</sup> phase (CMIP6) and the past climate experiments defined in the Model Intercomparison Project’s 4<sup>th</sup> phase (PMIP4). All of this output is freely available from the Earth System Grid Federation (ESGF). Yet there are overheads in analysing this resource that may prove complicated or prohibitive. Here we document the steps taken by ourselves to produce ensemble analyses covering past and future simulations. We outline the strategy used to curate, adjust the monthly calendar aggregation and process the information downloaded from the ESGF. The results of these steps were used to perform analysis for several of the initial publications arising from PMIP4. We provide post-processed fields for each simulation, such as climatologies and common measures of variability. Example scripts used to visualise and analyse these fields is provided for several important case studies.</p>

The Archaeology of Global Environment Change

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carole L. Crumley
Keyword(s):  
Human Activity ◽  
Global Environmental Change ◽  
Earth System ◽  
Human Environment ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Earth ◽  
Global Environmental ◽  
Urgent Task ◽  
The Two Cultures ◽  
Non Linear System

Recent, widely recognized changes in the Earth system are, in effect, changes in the coupled human–environment system. We have entered the Anthropocene, when human activity—along with solar forcing, volcanic activity, precession, and the like—must be considered a component (a ‘driver’) of global environmental change (Crutzen and Stoermer 2000; Levin 1998). The dynamic non-linear system in which we live is not in equilibrium and does not act in a predictable manner (see Fairhead, chapter 16 this volume for further discussion of non-equilibrium ecology). If humankind is to continue to thrive, it is of utmost importance that we identify the ideas and practices that nurture the planet as well as our species. Our best laboratory for this is the past, where long-, medium-, and short-term variables can be identified and their roles evaluated. Perhaps the past is our only laboratory: experimentation requires time we no longer have. Thus the integration of our understanding of human history with that of the Earth system is a timely and urgent task. Archaeologists bring two particularly useful sets of skills to this enterprise: how to collaborate, and how to learn from the past. Archaeology enjoys a long tradition of collaboration with colleagues in both the biophysical sciences and in the humanities to investigate human activity in all planetary environments. Archaeologists work alongside one another in the field, live together in difficult conditions, welcome collaboration with colleagues in other disciplines—and listen to them carefully—and tell compelling stories to an interested public. All are rare skills and precious opportunities. Until recently few practitioners of biophysical, social science, and humanities disciplines had experience in cross-disciplinary collaboration. Many scholars who should be deeply engaged in collaboration to avert disaster (for example, specialists in tropical medicine with their counterparts in land use change) still speak different professional ‘languages’ and have very different traditions of producing information. C. P. Snow, in The Two Cultures (1993 [1959]), was among the first to warn that the very structure of academia was leading to this serious, if unintended, outcome.

Multiple dichotomies of the Anthropocene

2016 ◽  
Vol 3 (3) ◽  
pp. 218-230 ◽  
Author(s):  
Whitney J Autin
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
Human Interaction ◽  
Modern Literature ◽  
Formal Definition ◽  
Earth System ◽  
Geological Time ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Earth ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
System Benefit

Anthropocene has developed a varied set of connotations among scientific and non-scientific advocates. As a result, multiple dichotomies of the Anthropocene exist within various scholarly disciplines. The Anthropocene allows people to reinforce and perpetuate preferred views about the implications of human interaction with the Earth System as our management of the environment is called into question. Scientific dichotomies arise from opinions about the need for formal or informal definition and the recognition of a modern versus historical onset of the Anthropocene. Philosophical dichotomies center around good versus dystopian outcomes of Anthropocene and whether or not humanity is part of what historically has been called nature. Political dichotomies insert Anthropocene into classic conservative versus liberal arguments. Artistic dichotomies tend to evaluate the effects of technology on modernism by embracing a nostalgia for the past or projecting an apocalyptic future. Multiple dichotomies drive conversation towards confusion as individuals argue preferred versions of an Anthropocene concept. Philosophical and political perspectives are affecting scientific views of proposed geological time markers for the start of the Anthropocene as conceptual ideologies appear to compete with tangible stratigraphic attributes. Formal definition of the Anthropocene has potential to inhibit popular usage and further confuse an already confused media. Informal stratigraphic usage by scientists and an open-ended view among non-scientific proponents may be the best approach to formulate a robust Anthropocene message. Both humanity and the Earth System benefit from a dynamic tag line that enhances environmental awareness and provides opportunity to modify our habits of resource overuse and ecosystem neglect. Concepts and imagery offered in the form of modern literature and art have the greatest prospect of affecting popular culture perspectives of the Anthropocene’s role in environmental debate.

scholarly journals The Habitable Zone of Inhabited Planets

2014 ◽  
Vol 11 (6) ◽  
pp. 8443-8483 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. I. Zuluaga ◽  
J. F. Salazar ◽  
P. Cuartas-Restrepo ◽  
G. Poveda
Keyword(s):  
Numerical Models ◽  
Physical Phenomenon ◽  
Life Forms ◽  
Habitable Zone ◽  
Earth System ◽  
Abiotic Environment ◽  
Physical Conditions ◽  
The Earth ◽  
Life Itself ◽  
Planetary Environment

Abstract. In this paper we discuss and illustrate the hypothesis that life substantially alters the state of a planetary environment and therefore, modifies the limits of the HZ as estimated for an uninhabited planet. This hypothesis lead to the introduction of the Habitable Zone for Inhabited Planets (hereafter InHZ), defined here as the region where the complex interaction between life and its abiotic environment is able to produce plausible equilibrium states with the necessary physical conditions for the existence and persistence of life itself. We support our hypothesis of an InHZ with three theoretical arguments, multiple evidences coming from observations of the Earth system, several conceptual experiments and illustrative numerical simulations. Conceptually the diference between the InHZ and the Abiotic HZ (AHZ) depends on unique and robust properties of life as an emergent physical phenomenon and not necesarily on the particular life forms bearing in the planet. Our aim here is to provide conceptual basis for the development of InHZ models incorporating consistently life-environment interactions. Although previous authors have explored the effects of life on habitability there is a gap in research developing the reasons why life should be systematically included at determining the HZ limits. We do not provide here definitive limits to the InHZ but we show through simple numerical models (as a parable of an inhabited planet) how the limits of the AHZ could be modified by including plausible interactions between biota and its environment. These examples aim also at posing the question that if limits of the HZ could be modified by the presence of life in those simple dynamical systems how will those limits change if life is included in established models of the AHZ.

Plastics in the Earth system

Science ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 373 (6550) ◽  
pp. 51-55
Author(s):  
Aron Stubbins ◽  
Kara Lavender Law ◽  
Samuel E. Muñoz ◽  
Thomas S. Bianchi ◽  
Lixin Zhu
Keyword(s):  
Organic Carbon ◽  
Global Scale ◽  
Earth System ◽  
Earth System Science ◽  
System Science ◽  
Global Problem ◽  
The Earth

Plastic contamination of the environment is a global problem whose magnitude justifies the consideration of plastics as emergent geomaterials with chemistries not previously seen in Earth’s history. At the elemental level, plastics are predominantly carbon. The comparison of plastic stocks and fluxes to those of carbon reveals that the quantities of plastics present in some ecosystems rival the quantity of natural organic carbon and suggests that geochemists should now consider plastics in their analyses. Acknowledging plastics as geomaterials and adopting geochemical insights and methods can expedite our understanding of plastics in the Earth system. Plastics also can be used as global-scale tracers to advance Earth system science.

5. Anthropocene

2016 ◽  
pp. 74-90
Author(s):  
Tim Lenton
Keyword(s):  
Human Evolution ◽  
Human Activities ◽  
Global Scale ◽  
Earth System ◽  
Revolutionary Change ◽  
The Earth ◽  
Key Events

Could the Earth system be on the brink of another revolutionary change, thanks to human activities? We humans are very recent products of evolution, yet already we are transforming the planet at a global scale. The recognition that humans are now a key component of the Earth system was encapsulated in the Bretherton diagram. More recently, the term ‘Anthropocene’ has been coined to describe a new geological epoch in which human activities are transforming the Earth system at a global scale. ‘Anthropocene’ introduces how human evolution was shaped by changes in the Earth system and how we have gone on to transform the Earth system—tracing the key events on a timeline.

New Heavens, New Earth

Dark Skies ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 65-104
Author(s):  
Daniel Deudney
Keyword(s):  
Solar System ◽  
Human Life ◽  
Earth System ◽  
Human Control ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Earth ◽  
Orbital Space ◽  
The Many ◽  
Life On Earth ◽  
Modern Astronomy

Humans have always attributed enormous importance to occurrences in the heavens. Over the past several centuries modern astronomy has revealed a cosmos of staggering size, filled with trillions of worlds. Its vacuum, weightlessness, lethal radiations, and fantastic speeds make space harshly inhospitable to human life. To access orbital space requires velocities some thirty-four times as fast as jet aircraft, climbing out of steep gravity wells. Of the many bodies mapped by science in this solar system, asteroids are most practically important because they sometimes collide with great violence, profoundly shaping Earth’s deep history. As knowledge of the cosmos has grown, anticipations of nearby intelligent life have dramatically shrunk. The Space Age has also witnessed a far-reaching revolution in understanding the Earth System. Marked by complexity, chaos, and emergence, life on Earth is incompletely understood and inventoried and much less subject to human control than previously assumed, reducing the feasibility of expansionist visions.

Modelling the global carbon cycle for the past and future evolution of the earth system

1999 ◽  
Vol 159 (1-4) ◽  
pp. 305-317 ◽  
Author(s):  
Siegfried Franck ◽  
Konrad Kossacki ◽  
Christine Bounama
Keyword(s):  
Carbon Cycle ◽  
Global Carbon Cycle ◽  
Earth System ◽  
Future Evolution ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Earth ◽  
Global Carbon

scholarly journals An Analysis of the Potential for the Formation of ‘Nodes of Persisting Complexity’

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (15) ◽  
pp. 8161
Author(s):  
Nick King ◽  
Aled Jones
Keyword(s):  
New Zealand ◽  
Scale Effects ◽  
Global Scale ◽  
Earth System ◽  
Sociopolitical Complexity ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
The Earth ◽  
Increased Risk ◽  
Starting Conditions ◽  
Geographical Locations

Human civilisation has undergone a continuous trajectory of rising sociopolitical complexity since its inception; a trend which has undergone a dramatic recent acceleration. This phenomenon has resulted in increasingly severe perturbation of the Earth System, manifesting recently as global-scale effects such as climate change. These effects create an increased risk of a global ‘de-complexification’ (collapse) event in which complexity could undergo widespread reversal. ‘Nodes of persisting complexity’ are geographical locations which may experience lesser effects from ‘de-complexification’ due to having ‘favourable starting conditions’ that may allow the retention of a degree of complexity. A shortlist of nations (New Zealand, Iceland, the United Kingdom, Australia and Ireland) were identified and qualitatively analysed in detail to ascertain their potential to form ‘nodes of persisting complexity’ (New Zealand is identified as having the greatest potential). The analysis outputs are applied to identify insights for enhancing resilience to ‘de-complexification’.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document