Geologic time is not easy to grasp mentally because of its magnitude.
TRUE
The story of the earth is written in the rocks.
FALSE-Jurassic
Giant reptiles dominate the earth during cretaceous period
FALSE-Anthropocene
It is during the Holocene epoch that man started to disturb the balance of nature.
TRUE
Ape man appeared and increased in number during the Pliocene epoch.
Planet Earth
Only planet in the solar system that has all elements important for our survival
Humans
Have the greatest influence in every aspect of the Earth on a scale similar to the great forces of nature
Its impact will have lasting and maybe irreversible influence affecting
Rocks
Where the story of the earth is written
Where scientists read records
Unfold geologic events and succession of life
Geological time scale
Hierarchical series of smaller chunks of time of the earth’s history
Marked by extinction of many life forms
Eons, eras, periods, epochs, ages
Divisions of the earth's history in descending length of time
Rock layers or strata
Unit of classification of the earth’s rock layers and the fossils found within them
Stratigraphy
Study of the correlation
Examining fossils and the certain organisms that are characteristic of the certain parts of the geologic record
Holocene
Last epoch
Last 12,000 years of stable climate since the last ice age during which human civilization developed
End of this geologic time due to
accelerated carbon emissions and sea level rise
Global mass extinction of species
Transformation of land by deforestation and development
Anthropocene
New geologic time after Holocene
Anthropocene Epoch
Unofficial unit of geologic time
Term used to describe the most recent period in Earth’s history due to the impact of human activity
Proposed geologic epoch which centers around humans as primary cause of planetary change
Age of the human epoch
Origin of the word
Human for anthropo
New for cene
Paul J Crutzen and Eugene F Stoermer
Coined the term anthropocene
Cultural concept
Referring to Anthropocene as it is not yet a formal geologic time scale
Evidences of Anthropocene (Human activity has:)
Pushed extinction rates of animals and plants far above the long-term average
Increased levels of climate-warming CO2 in the atmosphere at the fastest rate for 66m years
Put too much plastic in our waterways and oceans that they are now everywhere and will likely leave identifiable fossil records
Doubled the nitrogen and phosphorus in our soils due to fertilizer use
Left a permanent layer of airborne particulates in sediment and glacial ice such as black carbon from fossil fuel burning
Fossil fuel burning pushing levels from 280ppm to 400ppm
Developed and developing countries analogy
Since people’s lifestyles differ, ome people use more resources than others.
Renewable and non-renewable analogy
Some things can be easily acquired because they are abundant or cheap, while others are difficult to access because it needs more energy to process or are more expensive or rare
Lithosphere and hydrosphere
Where resources are usually found
Raw natural resource
Food, electricity, and other basic amenities for survival must be produced within the confines of nature
Developing countries use resources for survival
Developed countries use resources more than their needs
Pollution
Possible effect in processing raw materials into products that man use
Ecological footprint
Amount of biologically productive land and water needed to supply the people in a particular area or country with resources and to absorb and recycle the wastes and pollution produced by such resource use
Per capita ecological footprint
average ecological footprint of an individual in a given country or area.
Ecological deficit
Occurs when the country’s total ecological footprint is larger than its biological capacity to replace renewable resources and absorb the resulting waste products and pollution.
Humanity’s global ecological footprint
Go beyond earth’s biological capacity by about 25%
United States
world’s second largest per capita ecological footprint
Living unsustainably
By depleting and degrading the earth’s rare natural capital and the natural renewable income
Ecological footprint
Measures human’s consumption of natural resources against the earth’s ecological capacity (biocapacity) to regenerate them.
Earth Overshoot Day
a day on which we exhaust our ecological budget for the rest of that year
Climate change
Most obvious and pressing result of ecological overshoot
Producing carbon excess to what can be reabsorbed by the forests and seas
1.5 planets worth of resources
Accdg to Global Footprint Network, it takes the Earth one year and five months to regenerate what we use in one year
A country’s footprint
Sum of all the cropland, grazing land, forest and fishing grounds required to produce food, fibre, and timber it consumes, to absorb the wastes emitted when it uses energy and to provide space for infrastructure.
Footprint standards
Standard used in comparing a country’s, city’s, or region’s footprints.