{"id":51183,"date":"2018-10-26T10:26:46","date_gmt":"2018-10-26T14:26:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/newsroom.carleton.ca\/?post_type=cu_story&p=51183"},"modified":"2025-09-30T11:28:31","modified_gmt":"2025-09-30T15:28:31","slug":"pinpointing-anthropocene","status":"publish","type":"cu_story","link":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/story\/pinpointing-anthropocene\/","title":{"rendered":"Pinpointing the Origins of the Anthropocene"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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\n Pinpointing the Origins of the Anthropocene\n <\/h1>\n \n <\/header>\n <\/div>\n\n \n <\/path>\n <\/path>\n <\/svg>\n <\/div>\n\n \n\n <\/div>\n<\/section>\n\n

Humans have been shaped by our environments, and now, we shape them in return. It’s not just that we intentionally alter landscapes, or that our emissions impact the air.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By-products of human civilization are becoming part of the Earth itself. The chemical signatures of industry have created a new unit of geologic time. Radiation and emissions are integrating into the planet’s soils, sediments and rocks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Pinpointing
The research team puts a boat in the water at Crawford Lake.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

But that’s not exactly new. In Roman times, lead smelting emissions were blowing across the Atlantic and into the geological record of Canada’s north. The Industrial Revolution upped the ante, and by the time widespread nuclear testing rolled out in 1950, trace amounts radiation were dusting the entire planet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Geologists call this age the Anthropocene \u2013 the age of humans. In a discipline where time is often measured in millions or billions of years, they trace its origins to 1950, barely long enough ago to qualify for a seniors discount.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Hunting for the Anthropocene’s
\nOrigins in Crawford Lake<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Carleton’s Tim Patterson<\/a> is helping pinpoint the Anthropocene’s origins. At the International Union for Quaternary Research<\/a> conference in Dublin, Ireland next July, the Professor of Geology will make the case that Ontario’s Crawford Lake should be the Global Boundary Strategy Section and Type for this new era.<\/p>\n\n\n

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“In the vernacular, it’s called a golden spike,” Patterson says, “a place you can put your finger on, and say that it’s the boundary between one geologic unit and the next. A clear, identifiable point that marks the end of one era, and the beginning of the next.”<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

But what makes Crawford Lake so special?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Pinpointing
Researchers at Crawford Lake in Milton, Ontario.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

It’s tucked in a basin in Milton, Ontario, and protected by a conservation area. The lake bottom is anoxic \u2013 it has no oxygen — and as a result, no life. Motorized boats aren’t allowed on Crawford Lake either, further reducing the chances its geology will be disturbed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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