Humans and the Earth's surface

In the last few years, the suggestion of a new geological epoch has been subject of a progressively intense discussion within the Earth science community: the question as to whether or not we are living in an epoch of extensive anthropogenic influence, not only on the biotic environment, but also on the sedimentary and geomorphological processes that affect the shape of the Earth's surface. Human activities have left signatures (e.g. agricultural practices, Tarolli et al. 2014) on the Earth for millennia, and the magnitude of this fingerprint is currently growing, with clear impacts upon in morphology (Wilkinson, 2005; Wohl, 2013; Tarolli and Sofia, 2016), ecosystems (Ellis, 2011), sediments and climate (Waters et al., 2016). The recognition and the analysis of these changes represents a challenge for understanding the evolution of the Earth's landscape. The scientific community is now discussing a formal definition of the Anthropocene as a geologic epoch, stratigraphically distinct from the Holocene. The purpose of this special issue is to join such a debate, by offering a geomorphologic perspective on the effects of human activities on the Earth. It summarizes the work partly published in the last few years in the journal Earth Surface Processes and Landforms, and partly presented at the EGU General Assembly 2014, representing a synthesis of the state of the science of the role of humans as geomorphology agents. The presented papers are grouped in three different sections: (a) Anthropocene and landscape impact, (b) Anthropocene and Earth surface dynamics, (c) Anthropocene and its formalization as geologic epoch. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.

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