Author Archives: Lynn Soreghan

The Critical Zone as Critical Infrastructure

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Soil profile

Soil profile (northern France). Notice the distinct horizons— darkest at top, where it’s most organic rich and—below that— various shades of brown that reflect leaching and accumulation of minerals over the millennia of formation of this soil. All photos by author.

Infrastructure— “the set of fundamental facilities and systems that support the sustainable functionality of households and firms. Serving a country, city, or other area, including the services and facilities necessary for its economy to function.” [Wikipedia] Continue reading →

“A Billion Black Anthropocenes or None”

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CITATION:
K. Yusoff, 2019, University of Minnesota Press.
 
ON-LINE AVAILABILITY:
Page to purchase e-pub.
 
ABSTRACT:
Kathryn Yusoff examines how the grammar of geology is foundational to establishing the extractive economies of subjective life and the earth under colonialism and slavery. She initiates a transdisciplinary conversation between black feminist theory, geography, and the earth sciences, addressing Continue reading →

Scaling Deep Time: Encountering the History of Climate Change

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Glacially striated (scratched) surfaces, Lake Tahoe, CA

The historian has rarely lived through the events of past times that he describes. He has not seen them with his own eyes; rather, he describes them on the basis of the documents at hand, whether these are the yellowed leaves of old codices and parchments, or the brown fossil leaves Continue reading →

Earth Plasticity and Plasticity of Perception

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One of my earliest memories as a freshman at UCLA took place in the front row of a cavernous, wood-paneled lecture hall equipped with a black-topped resin demonstration table. The class was Introductory Geology, and the professor a bearded, pony-tailed free spirit giddy with the anticipation of Continue reading →

Pondering a diorama to perceive the Anthropocene

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“This sprawling epic is as lively as a natural history museum diorama.” (Stephanie Zacharek, review of “10,000 BC”)

Perceiving means to become conscious of, to realize, to understand, to grasp. Natural history museums strive to enable the public to perceive, commonly in re-creations of past worlds. Who hasn’t gazed over a diorama of the Carboniferous Period, for example, Continue reading →

“Urban Metabolism and the Energy Stored in Cities: Implications for Resilience”

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CITATION:
David N. Bristow and Christopher A. Kennedy. 2013.  Journal of Industrial Ecology, vol. 17, no. 5: pp. 656-667.
ON-LINE AVAILABILITY:
ABSTRACT:
Using the city of Toronto as a case study, this article examines impacts of energy stocks and flexible demand in the urban metabolism on the resilience of the city, including discussion of Continue reading →

“Cities in the age of the Anthropocene: Climate change agents and the potential for mitigation”

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CITATION:
Pincetl, S. 2017. Anthropocene, Vol. 20, pp. 74-82.
ON-LINE AVAILABILITY:
ABSTRACT:
Cities are human creations where many of the emissions causing climate change originate. Every aspect of daily life in cities Continue reading →

An Age of Trump in the Anthropocene Epoch?

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Stratigraphy is the science of rock strata; in geological terms, this translates to the science of time. But what IS time? Difficult to define, for certain, but most of us can agree that it marks the passage of events. We experience the passage of Continue reading →

Hypothesized Hope

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THIS POST IS PART OF OUR ANTHROPOCENE BIOSPHERE PROJECT–A SERIES OF POSTS ON ERLE ELLIS’ ‘ECOLOGY IN AN ANTHROPOGENIC BIOSPHERE‘ (ECOLOGICAL MONOGRAPHS, 85/3 (2015))

In preparation for Erle Ellis’ visit to OU’s campus in April, I’ve spent some time considering topics I hope we can address during his visit. Continue reading →

“The Global Carbon Cycle: A Test of Our Knowledge of Earth as a System”

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CITATION:
P. Falkowski et al. 2000. Science, vol. 290, pp. 291-296.
ON-LINE AVAILABILITY:
ABSTRACT:
Motivated by the rapid increase in atmospheric CO2 due to human activities since the Industrial Revolution, several international scientific research programs have analyzed the role of Continue reading →

The Dust of Civilization

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THIS POST IS PART OF THE SOCIAL MEDIA IN THE ANTHROPOCENE PROJECT—SEE THIS DESCRIPTION OF OUR SUBMISSION.

In an earlier post, I emphasized the strong link between the origins of agriculture and the positions of loess (loosely “dust”) regions—arguing in essence that, from dust arises life. If loess bestows habitation and habitability, then loess paved the way for Continue reading →

“Loess: The Yellow Earth”

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THIS POST IS PART OF THE SOCIAL MEDIA IN THE ANTHROPOCENE PROJECT—SEE THIS DESCRIPTION OF OUR SUBMISSION.
CITATION:
Smalley, I., and Rogers, C. 1996. Geology Today, Vol. 12, No. 5, pp. 186-193.
ON-LINE AVAILABILITY:
ABSTRACT:
A wind-deposited silt forming large deposits in China and middle America, loess is the basis of much grade-one agricultural land, and has sourced the building materials for civilizations. Produced largely as a result of Continue reading →

“An anthropogenic marker horizon in the future rock record”

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CITATION:
Corcoran, P.L., Moore, C.J., and Jazvac, K. 2014. GSA Today, Vol. 24, No. 6, pp. 4-8.
ON-LINE AVAILABILITY:
ABSTRACT:
Recognition of increasing plastic debris pollution over the last several decades has led to investigations of the imminent dangers posed to Continue reading →

Earth, Life, and Time: What is Natural?

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Life on Earth has always altered its environment.1 “Deep” time records major shifts in atmospheric composition, for example, as life evolved photosynthesis, leading to a massive transfer of CO2 from the atmosphere to the biosphere. Given this, is the large-scale injection into the atmosphere of anthropogenically released carbon a completely natural consequence of biotic activity?

Atmospheric levels of CO2 have always changed, attributable in part to life — and well before the influence of humans. On geologic time scales such fluctuation results from Continue reading →