Archaeological assessment reveals Earth’s early transformation through land use

Humans began to leave lasting impacts on Earth's surface starting 10,000 to 8000 years ago. Through a synthetic collaboration with archaeologists around the globe, Stephens et al. compiled a comprehensive picture of the trajectory of human land use worldwide during the Holocene (see the Perspective by Roberts). Hunter-gatherers, farmers, and pastoralists transformed the face of Earth earlier and to a greater extent than has been widely appreciated, a transformation that was essentially global by 3000 years before the present.Environmentally transformative human use of land accelerated with the emergence of agriculture, but the extent, trajectory, and implications of these early changes are not well understood. An empirical global assessment of land use from 10,000 years before the present (yr B.P.) to 1850 CE reveals a planet largely transformed by hunter-gatherers, farmers, and pastoralists by 3000 years ago, considerably earlier than the dates in the land-use reconstructions commonly used by Earth scientists. Synthesis of knowledge contributed by more than 250 archaeologists highlighted gaps in archaeological expertise and data quality, which peaked for 2000 yr B.P. and in traditionally studied and wealthier regions. Archaeological reconstruction of global land-use history illuminates the deep roots of Earth’s transformation and challenges the emerging Anthropocene paradigm that large-scale anthropogenic global environmental change is mostly a recent phenomenon.Office of the VP for Researc

Ecosystem services and nature's contribution to people:negotiating diverse values and trade-offs in land systems

Land is increasingly managed to serve multiple societal demands. Beyond food, fiber, habitation, and recreation, land is now being called on to meet demands for carbon sequestration, water purification, biodiversity conservation, and many others. Meeting these multiple demands requires negotiating trade-offs among the choices and differing values placed on them by diverse stakeholders and institutions. Here, we review recent advances in understanding the role of diverse values and trade-offs in managing landscapes to support multiple demands, from a land systems perspective. Recent work by the IPBES and others has recognized the need to accommodate a greater diversity of values into decision-making through the framework of nature's contributions to people (NCP) providing a perspective on human nature relations that goes beyond a stock-flow, ecosystem services, decision-making framing. NCP offers real potential to enable land system science to better integrate the many diverse value systems of stakeholders and institutions into efforts to better understand and more fairly govern the increasingly wicked tradeoffs of land systems in the Anthropocene, especially under conditions of less well functioning institutions and governance. © 2019 Elsevier B.V.This study contributes to the Global Land Programme. Pascual acknowledges the support by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness , under BC3 ‘Unit of excellence’ (MIMECO, MDM-2017-0714 )

Changes in Photosynthate Unloading from Perfused Seed Coats of Phaseolus vulgaris L Induced by Osmoticum and Ethylenediaminetetraacetate (EDTA)

ABSTRACT Photosynthate unloading in Phaseolus vulgaris L. seed coats was studied by treating perfused seed coats with differing concentrations of an osmoticum and ethylenediaminetetraacetate (EDTA). Large changes in osmoticum concentration typically produced rapid changes in efflux of unlabelled sugar and steady-state-labelled l4 C-photosynthate. Osmoticum-induced changes in photosynthate efflux were caused by phloem import stimulation at low cell turgor and net efflux stimulation by high cell turgor. Even though rapid changes in sugar and tracer efflux were often induced by osmoticum treatments, the specific activity of sugar released from seed coats was not greatly affected by these treatments and was similar to the specific activity of sugar remaining in the seed coat after perfusion. Thus, tracer was transported from the phloem throughout the seed coat sugar pool before it was released to the apoplast. This result is most consistent with symplastic phloem unloading throughout perfused seed coats, because apoplastic transport between cells within the seed coat was blocked by perfusion. Photosynthate efflux was stimulated by simultaneous treatment of seed coats with EDTA and different concentrations of an osmoticum; loss of photosynthate from seed coats did not appear to be tissue-specific

The Anthropocene is best understood as an ongoing, intensifying, diachronous event

Current debate on the status and character of the Anthropocene is focussed on whether this interval of geological time should be designated as a formal unit of epoch/series rank in the International Chronostratigraphic Chart/Geological Time Scale, or whether it is more appropriate for it to be considered as an informal ‘event’ comparable in significance with other major transformative events in deeper geological time. The case for formalizing the Anthropocene as a chronostratigraphical unit with a base at approximately 1950 CE is being developed by the Anthropocene Working Group of the Subcommission on Quaternary Stratigraphy. Here we outline the alternative position and explain why the time-transgressive nature of human impact on global environmental systems that is reflected in the recent stratigraphical record means that the Anthropocene is better seen not as a series/epoch with a fixed lower boundary, but rather as an unfolding, transforming and intensifying geological event

Land system science and sustainable development of the earth system: A global land project perspective

Land systems are the result of human interactions with the natural environment. Understanding the drivers, state, trends and impacts of different land systems on social and natural processes helps to reveal how changes in the land system affect the functioning of the socio-ecological system as a whole and the tradeoff these changes may represent. The Global Land Project has led advances by synthesizing land systems research across different scales and providing concepts to further understand the feedbacks between social-and environmental systems, between urban and rural environments and between distant world regions. Land system science has moved from a focus on observation of change and understanding the drivers of these changes to a focus on using this understanding to design sustainable transformations through stakeholder engagement and through the concept of land governance. As land use can be seen as the largest geo-engineering project in which mankind has engaged, land system science can act as a platform for integration of insights from different disciplines and for translation of knowledge into action

The ecological footprint remains a misleading metric of global sustainability

Linus Blomqvist, Barry W. Brook, Erle C. Ellis, Peter M. Kareiva, Ted Nordhaus, Michael Shellenberge

A practical solution: the Anthropocene is a geological event, not a formal epoch

The Anthropocene has yet to be defined in a way that is functional both to the international geological community and to the broader fields of environmental and social sciences. Formally defining the Anthropocene as a chronostratigraphical series and geochronological epoch with a precise global start date would drastically reduce the Anthropocene’s utility across disciplines. Instead, we propose the Anthropocene be defined as a geological event, thereby facilitating a robust geological definition linked with a scholarly framework more useful to and congruent with the many disciplines engaging with human-environment interactions. Unlike formal epochal definitions, geological events can recognize the spatial and temporal heterogeneity and diverse social and environmental processes that interact to produce anthropogenic global environmental changes. Consequently, an Anthropocene Event would incorporate a far broader range of transformative human cultural practices and would be more readily applicable across academic fields than an Anthropocene Epoch, while still enabling a robust stratigraphic characterization

The Anthropocene is best understood as an ongoing, intensifying, diachronous event

Current debate on the status and character of the Anthropocene is focussed on whether this interval of geological time should be designated as a formal unit of epoch/series rank in the International Chronostratigraphic Chart/Geological Time Scale, or whether it is more appropriate for it to be considered as an informal ‘event’ comparable in significance with other major transformative events in deeper geological time. The case for formalizing the Anthropocene as a chronostratigraphical unit with a base at approximately 1950 CE is being developed by the Anthropocene Working Group of the Subcommission on Quaternary Stratigraphy. Here we outline the alternative position and explain why the time‐transgressive nature of human impact on global environmental systems that is reflected in the recent stratigraphical record means that the Anthropocene is better seen not as a series/epoch with a fixed lower boundary, but rather as an unfolding, transforming and intensifying geological event

The Anthropocene is functionally and stratigraphically distinct from the Holocene

Human activity is leaving a pervasive and persistent signature on Earth. Vigorous debate continues about whether this warrants recognition as a new geologic time unit known as the Anthropocene. We review anthropogenic markers of functional changes in the Earth system through the stratigraphic record. The appearance of manufactured materials in sediments − including aluminum, plastics and concrete − coincides with global spikes in fallout radionuclides and particulates from fossil-fuel combustion. Carbon, nitrogen, and phosphorus cycles have been substantially modified over the last century. Rates of sea-level rise, and the extent of human perturbation of the climate system, exceed Late Holocene changes. Biotic changes include species invasions worldwide and accelerating rates of extinction. These combined signals render the Anthropocene stratigraphically distinct from the Holocene and earlier epochs

Archetype analysis in sustainability research : meanings, motivations, and evidence-based policy making

Archetypes are increasingly used as a methodological approach to understand recurrent patterns in variables and processes that shape the sustainability of social-ecological systems. The rapid growth and diversification of archetype analyses has generated variations, inconsistencies, and confusion about the meanings, potential, and limitations of archetypes. Based on a systematic review, a survey, and a workshop series, we provide a consolidated perspective on the core features and diverse meanings of archetype analysis in sustainability research, the motivations behind it, and its policy relevance. We identify three core features of archetype analysis: recurrent patterns, multiple models, and intermediate abstraction. Two gradients help to apprehend the variety of meanings of archetype analysis that sustainability researchers have developed: (1) understanding archetypes as building blocks or as case typologies and (2) using archetypes for pattern recognition, diagnosis, or scenario development. We demonstrate how archetype analysis has been used to synthesize results from case studies, bridge the gap between global narratives and local realities, foster methodological interplay, and transfer knowledge about sustainability strategies across cases. We also critically examine the potential and limitations of archetype analysis in supporting evidence-based policy making through context-sensitive generalizations with case-level empirical validity. Finally, we identify future priorities, with a view to leveraging the full potential of archetype analysis for supporting sustainable development