Visualizing the Anthropocene - HUMAN IMPACT on the Planet

The Anthropocene is a key term for understanding the world today. It is controversial and heavily debated among academics. This official Working Group on the Anthropocene (WGA) announced that they consider that the Anthropocene should be adopted as an official geologic age, and that it started with the dawn of the nuclear age after 1945. There are still many steps in the process to have the term officially adopted and many controversies to be addressed.

Paul Crutzen, the atmospheric scientist popularized the term “The Anthropocene.” Now 82 years old, Crutzen won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1995 for his work on the formation and decomposition of ozone.

SO, What is the Anthropocene, then? A geological epoch? An explanation? A theory? An ideology? Or all these things at once, blended into a complex mess?

One method to simplify this understanding is through visualization.

The sequence of geological time since the formation of the planet approximately 4.6 billion years ago can be visualized in many ways.

The Clock Chart

The clock chart shows the formation of earth in a 24-hour clock, focused mainly on major geological events, where human life appeared 20 seconds before midnight. The clock clearly shows how large certain periods were, showing that our existence is only a fraction of a long history. Therefore you could question our influence on earth and also the existence of the Anthropocene. In addition, the chart shows how climate strongly affects life by emphasizing major geological and paleontological events. For example, by having an oxygen-rich atmosphere on earth, prokaryotes and eukaryotes appeared and many more lives followed. However, looking at the length and influence of a period for different lives to appear or to disappear, you could also question the existence of the Anthropocene, as changes took millions of years and humans have appeared only recently. Furthermore, the time frame of 24 hours gives the indication that the formation of earth has stopped now.

The second is the international stratigraphic chart produced by the International Commission on Stratigraphy.

International Chronostratigraphic Chart

The second visualization, the international stratigraphic chart shows how the earth is formed by different units depending on the events that have occurred in any period in the past 4.6 billions years. The chart gives a clear overview of the various periods, epochs and stages. However, for someone who is rather unfamiliar with geological periods, this chart is not useful to understand how the earth has been formed. There is no additional information about geological or paleontological events in these various units. Rather significant is that the chart shows that the last three stages in the Quaternary period were less than one million years compared to other stages, which were at least one million or more years. It is possible to imply that the following stages will be shorter too and therefore we are indeed in an Anthropocene.

The third is a time spiral.

Geological Time Spiral

This third illustration, designed by the US Geological Survey, is very similar to the first except it shows the periods and epochs instead of eras. The Precambrian is effectively compressed by taking up many cycles of the spiral back in time in ever decreasing circles. It works like the clock chart but with more cycles of the clock allowing recent time to be zoomed in on. There is also more detail of the life forms of the time. Modern man and hominids can be seen emerging in the Pleistocene, including their use of fire and tools. A city can be seen in the Holocene. It could be updated if needs be to add another epoch.

This visualization shows in a clear and convenient way how life has evolved over time on earth by visualizing mostly paleontological events. It shows that a major part of earth’s history consisted of life, but that only in the past half billion years there is multi-cellular life. For someone who is not very familiar with geological periods, this visualization of the formation of the earth is accessible and understandable. Thereby the spiral shows that the formation of earth is a continuous process by the blurry edges of the most current Holocene epoch.

To conclude, in all three of the visualizations indicate that the Anthropocene is a primarily a short period in the 4.6 billion years of earth’s history. The earth is still in a period of change, as human impact is increasing over time. In addition, the period over which we strongly influence the earth geologically is rather small compared to previous periods. Therefore, is there a significant reason for a new epoch, considering that 11.700 years ago we arrived in the Holocene, our current epoch. Furthermore, the time spiral was the most informative visualization in directly understanding in which time frame with accompanying major events the earth has been formed.