Human activities and Holocene environmental change in NW Spain

[EN] Crutzen and Stoermer (2000) introduced the concept of “Anthropocene”, to highlight the beginning of a new, human-dominated, geological epoch, one in which the degree of alteration of atmospheric greenhouse gases (GHG) concentrations by humans is large enough to produce significant changes in th...

Descripción completa

Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores: Martínez Cortizas, Antonio, Kaal, Joeri, Costa-Casais, Manuela
Tipo de recurso: otro
Fecha de publicación:2009
País:España
Institución:Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC)
Repositorio:DIGITAL.CSIC. Repositorio Institucional del CSIC
OAI Identifier:oai:digital.csic.es:10261/54631
Acceso en línea:http://hdl.handle.net/10261/54631
Access Level:acceso abierto
Palabra clave:Cambios medioambientales
Environmental changes
Holoceno
Holocene
Galicia
Instituto de Ciencias del Patrimonio
Institute of Heritage Sciences
Patrimonio cultural
Cultural Heritage
Incipit
Descripción
Sumario:[EN] Crutzen and Stoermer (2000) introduced the concept of “Anthropocene”, to highlight the beginning of a new, human-dominated, geological epoch, one in which the degree of alteration of atmospheric greenhouse gases (GHG) concentrations by humans is large enough to produce significant changes in the climate system. Its beginning was set to 1800 AD, at the onset of the Industrial Revolution, assuming that human influence on the atmosphere was negligible before this date. Others see the start of a notable increase in the effect of a human activity on the functioning of the biosphere, as the Neolithic Revolution, when all the usual geological processes were “joined by a new and immensely significant one, never before seen on the planet, and one without which civilization would not exist: agriculture” (Chesworth, 2002). It is obvious that at present the degree of transformation of the environment is larger than at any other previous period of human history. For example, recent modelling of human impact on ocean ecosystems has revealed that no area of the oceans is unaffected by, at least, indirect impacts (Halpern et al., 2008). This research showed that a large fraction (41%) of the oceans is strongly affected by multiple drivers, and that only particular areas (as those near the poles) show little human impact.