The Future of Human–Landscape Interactions: Drawing on the Past, Anticipating the Future

Excerpt

Without question, humanity is at a crossroad amidst rapid environmental changes. Some of these changes are natural, such as climate variability, but human-induced alterations on Earth have accelerated in recent decades, reaching a scale and intensity like never before. Virtually no place on Earth remains untouched by human activity. With a growing human population expected to exceed 10 billion people in coming decades (United Nations 2010), human interactions with Earth will likely continue to accelerate. A formal proposal to name a new timeframe within the Geological Time Scale, the “Anthropocene” (Crutzen and Stoermer 2000), is in development for consideration by the International Commission on Stratigraphy (Zalasiewicz et al. 2011). This proposed geologic timeframe recognizes the undeniable role of human activity in affecting Earth’s functioning, and is now widely debated among academic scientists, practitioners, and the public alike (e.g., Balter 2013). …