Managing Global Change: Earth System Science in the Anthropocene

Abstract

It is only a few years since terms like “Anthropozoikum” and “Anthropocene” have come into existence – or, at least, have attracted the attention of a broader academic public1. Embedded into the discussions around climate change and/or the many facets of Global Change, “Anthropozoikum” and “Anthropocene” are considered to be scientific terminologies that may be suited to stand for the beginning of a potentially new geological era: an era dominated by the increasingly stronger and obviously lasting imprint of mankind on nature. This human fingerprint and its impacts on the climate system and on natural human environments may well have the dimensions and consequences of a geological force. In his contribution to this volume, Paul J. Crutzen suggests that the beginning of the Industrial Revolution may also mark the beginning of the Anthropocene characterised as an “in many ways human-dominated geological epoch supplementing the Holocene” or more precisely, that the accelerating human activities like land use changes, deforestation, and fossil fuel burning since the later 18th century have driven multiple interacting effects that alter the earth’s environment on an unprecedented scale.2 It coincides with scientific evidence of growing concentrations of carbon dioxide, methane and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere as well as in terrestrial or marine deposits. Crutzen provides a persuasive list of human activities that influence our climate system and our natural environments upon which human societies and cultures depend. It has repeatedly been stated that these influences or changes create unprecedented challenges that demand new strategies to generate scientific