2024 QG&G CAREER AWARD: ANTHROPOCENE FUTURES

Humans have changed the face of Earth more drastically over the past 50 years than at any time in history. Through agriculture, deforestation, mining, urban development, and the construction of dams, humans have promoted soil erosion, changed hydrology, altered chemical and biotic environments, and interrupted sediment movement along rivers. Such changes have created a host of hazards that include flash flooding, pollutants in water and sediment, and even accelerated trends in pandemics. Anthropogenic climate change has exacerbated these hazards with extremes in drought and floods, such as reflected in the growing frequency and magnitude of wildfires and in the range of post-fire effects. People are also expanding into areas less accommodating to settlements in response to population growth, increasing risk and exposure to such hazards. Recognition of the pervasive environmental consequences of accelerating human interactions with Earth systems has prompted introduction of the term “anthropocene” two decades ago to signify a new era dominated by human activity. Although the subsequent proposal and consideration for a new interval of geologic time did not yield a change in the official chronostratigraphic chart, continuing interest in “anthropocene” in the scientific communities and recognition of the urgency of the problem are apparent. To date, more than 12,000 scholarly articles have appeared with a search term “anthropocene” in the article title, abstract, or keyword. This paper assesses the changing of the times with respect to a geomorphology of the anthropocene. Beyond documenting human impacts, it focuses on progress along several themes—understanding long-term legacies of human activities; complex interactions in anthropogenic landscapes; and feedbacks and coupled human-landscape dynamics—in envisioning possible anthropocene futures that are just and sustainable.