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1. Introductory lecture: atmospheric chemistry in the Anthropocene

   https://doi.org/10.1039/c7fd00161d  

   Finlayson-Pitts, Barbara J. (January 2017, Faraday Discuss.)

   The term “Anthropocene” was coined by Professor Paul Crutzen in 2000 to describe an unprecedented era in which anthropogenic activities are impacting planet Earth on a global scale. Greatly increased emissions into the atmosphere, reflecting the advent of the Industrial Revolution, have caused significant changes in both the lower and upper atmosphere. Atmospheric reactions of the anthropogenic emissions and of those with biogenic compounds have significant impacts on human health, visibility, climate and weather. Two activities that have had particularly large impacts on the troposphere are fossil fuel combustion and agriculture, both associated with a burgeoning population. Emissions are also changing due to alterations in land use. This paper describes some of the tropospheric chemistry associated with the Anthropocene, with emphasis on areas having large uncertainties. These include heterogeneous chemistry such as those of oxides of nitrogen and the neonicotinoid pesticides, reactions at liquid interfaces, organic oxidations and particle formation, the role of sulfur compounds in the Anthropocene and biogenic–anthropogenic interactions. A clear and quantitative understanding of the connections between emissions, reactions, deposition and atmospheric composition is central to developing appropriate cost-effective strategies for minimizing the impacts of anthropogenic activities. The evolving nature of emissions in the Anthropocene places atmospheric chemistry at the fulcrum of determining human health and welfare in the future. 

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2. A global open-source dataset of monthly irrigated and rainfed cropped areas (MIRCA-OS) for the 21st century

   https://doi.org/10.1038/s41597-024-04313-w  

   Kebede, Endalkachew Abebe; Oluoch, Kevin Ong’are; Siebert, Stefan; Mehta, Piyush; Hartman, Sarah; Jägermeyr, Jonas; Ray, Deepak; Ali, Tariq; Brauman, Kate A; Deng, Qinyu; et al (December 2025, Scientific Data)

   Crop production is among the most extensive human activities on the planet – with critical importance for global food security, land use, environmental burden, and climate. Yet despite the key role that croplands play in global land use and Earth systems, there remains little understanding of how spatial patterns of global crop cultivation have recently evolved and which crops have contributed most to these changes. Here we construct a new data library of subnational crop-specific irrigated and rainfed harvested area statistics and combine it with global gridded land cover products to develop a global gridded (5-arcminute) irrigated and rainfed cropped area (MIRCA-OS) dataset for the years 2000 to 2015 for 23 crop classes. These global data products support critical insights into the spatially detailed patterns of irrigated and rainfed cropland change since the start of the century and provide an improved foundation for a wide array of global assessments spanning agriculture, water resource management, land use change, climate impact, and sustainable development. 

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3. Assessing the long-term impacts of research facilities on soil ecosystems of the McMurdo Dry Valleys, Antarctica

   https://doi.org/10.1017/S0954102026100674  

   Howkins, Adrian; Chignell, Stephen M; Barrett, John E; Gooseff, Michael N; Reynebeau, Emily R; Robinson, David M; Pothula, Satyendra; Takacs-Vesbach, Cristina; Adams, Byron J (May 2026, Antarctic Science)

   Abstract Understanding how human activities affect Antarctic ecosystems is essential for both environmental management and the interpretation of ecological change. This is particularly important in Antarctica’s ice-free areas, which contain most of the continent’s terrestrial biodiversity and host the majority of scientific infrastructure. While work has been done to understand short-term impacts of research stations and scientific activity, little is known about the persistence of these impacts on soil ecosystems. Here, we examine the long-term ecological legacy of historical research infrastructure in the McMurdo Dry Valleys, East Antarctica. We collected soil samples from sites of historical research facilities that have since been removed, extracted and identified soil invertebrates and conducted statistical and geospatial analyses to identify spatiotemporal trends and evaluate patterns of abundance relative to distance from disturbance centres and time since abandonment. Soils closer to former infrastructure consistently had lower nematode abundances than soils further away, indicating long-lasting impacts of human activities on soil ecosystems. We also found evidence of potential recovery in some nematode populations, which appears to depend on the type of disturbance and the surrounding environmental setting. At several sites, surface disturbance from historical infrastructure is no longer readily apparent but biological recovery remains incomplete, demonstrating that visual restoration of the landscape does not necessarily correspond to ecological recovery. Measuring the impacts of human activities in these areas is important because they may confound our ability to interpret the subtle but significant effects of climate change and ecosystem responses more generally. This is particularly pressing as research and tourism are expected to increase in these regions. We offer ecological explanations for these patterns and discuss their implications for environmental management and conservation in the McMurdo Dry Valleys and other ice-free areas of Antarctica. 

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4. Ours Is the Earth: Science and Human History in the Anthropocene

   https://doi.org/10.1163/18722636-12341447  

   Jasanoff, Sheila (November 2020, Journal of the Philosophy of History)

   null (Ed.)

   Abstract History at one time drew unproblematically on records produced by human societies about themselves and their doings. Advances in biology and the earth sciences introduced new narrative resources that repositioned the human story in relation to the evolution of all else on the planet, thereby decentering earlier conceptions of time, life, and human agency. This essay reflects on what it means for our understanding of the human that the history of our species has become so intimately entangled with the material processes that make up the biosphere, while concurrently the temporal horizon of our imagination has been stretched forward and back, underscoring the brevity of human existence in relation to earthly time. I suggest that, despite significant changes in the resources with which we can rethink the human condition, drawing upon the sciences, history’s fundamental purposes have not been rendered irrelevant. These center, as before, on the normative project of connecting past and future in ways that make sense of human experience and give meaning to it. In particular, the question of how humans should imagine the stewardship of the Earth in the Anthropocene remains an ethical project for history and not primarily the domain of the natural sciences. 

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5. Steven Hartman, Astrid Ogilvie, Jon Haukur Ingimundarson, Andrew J Dugmore, George Hambrecht, Thomas H. McGovern

   Steven Hartman, Astrid Ogilvie (January 2017, Global and planetary change)

   This paper contributes to recent studies exploring the longue durée of human impacts on island landscapes, the impacts of climate and other environmental changes on human communities, and the interaction of human societies and their environments at different spatial and temporal scales. In particular, the paper addresses Iceland during the medieval period (with a secondary, comparative focus on Norse Greenland) and discusses episodes where environmental and climatic changes have appeared to cross key thresholds for agricultural productivity. The paper draws upon international, interdisciplinary research in the North Atlantic region led by the North Atlantic Biocultural Organization (NABO) and the Nordic Network for Interdisciplinary Environmental Studies (NIES) in the Circumpolar Networks program of the Integrated History and Future of People on Earth (IHOPE). By interlinking analyses of historically grounded literature with archaeological studies and environmental science, valuable new perspectives can emerge on how these past societies may have understood and coped with such impacts. As climate and other environmental changes do not operate in isolation, vulnerabilities created by socioeconomic factors also beg consideration. The paper illustrates the benefits of an integrated environmental-studies approach that draws on data, methodologies and analytical tools of environmental humanities, social sciences, and geosciences to better understand long-term human ecodynamics and changing human-landscape-environment interactions through time. One key goal is to apply previously unused data and concerted expertise to illuminate human responses to past changes; a secondary aim is to consider how lessons derived from these cases may be applicable to environmental threats and socioecological risks in the future, especially as understood in light of the New Human Condition, the concept transposed from Hannah Arendt's influential framing of the human condition that is foregrounded in the present special issue. This conception admits human agency's role in altering the conditions for life on earth, in large measure negatively, while acknowledging the potential of this self-same agency, if effectively harnessed and properly directed, to sustain essential planetary conditions through a salutary transformation of human perception, understanding and remedial action. The paper concludes that more long-term historical analyses of cultures and environments need to be undertaken at various scales. Past cases do not offer perfect analogues for the future, but they can contribute to a better understanding of how resilience and vulnerability occur, as well as how they may be compromised or mitigated. 

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