Forum on the Anthropocene

Abstract

Geographers have been thinking and teaching about human interactions with the environment for centuries. Whether the phrase used to describe this area of scholarship is man‐land, man and nature, people‐environment, nature‐society, human dimensions of global change, or the Anthropocene, these studies are deeply rooted under the umbrella of geography. Scholars in the natural sciences, social sciences, humanities, and creative arts have embraced the concept of the Anthropocene, and often employ it as a vernacular term with no implied connection to a so‐called golden spike, or stratigraphic layer of sediment or rock that would mark an official transition from one slice of geologic time to the next. This collection of essays explores ways in which the Anthropocene may be a helpful framework to organize geographical teaching and scholarship about ways in which people have interacted with and transformed planet Earth. The term Anthropocene was coined in the realm of Earth System science, but the authors who contributed to this Forum relate the idea to topics such as novel ecosystems and species assemblages, conservation, commodification of nature, global capitalism, and ways in which our species, Homo sapiens, has markedly transformed the Earth for at least thousands of years. The Forum also engages with the fact that the Anthropocene as a proposed new epoch of the geologic time scale may not make sense at the spatial and temporal scales at which geographers view the world. Geographers have an opportunity to address myriad unanswered questions about the Anthropocene.

• conservation
• Earth System science
• Entanglement
• global capitalism
• golden spike
• human dimensions of global change
• nature
• novel ecosystems

We thank the authors who contributed to this forum and the reviewers who provided constructive comments and insightful suggestions on the draft essays.

We thank the authors who contributed to this forum and the reviewers who provided constructive comments and insightful suggestions on the draft essays.

Notes

We thank the authors who contributed to this forum and the reviewers who provided constructive comments and insightful suggestions on the draft essays.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Susy Svatek Ziegler

Dr. Susy Svatek Ziegler is an associate professor of geography and department head of Earth, Environmental & Geographical Sciences at Northern Michigan University, Marquette, Michigan 49855; [[email protected]].

David H. Kaplan

Dr. David H. Kaplan is editor‐in‐chief of the Geographical Review and a professor of geography at Kent State University, Kent, Ohio 44242; [[email protected]].