Studying the Siberian Anthropocene: An Introduction

Abstract

The Anthropocene implies a planetary shift in the functioning of the systems that regulate life on Earth. Overwhelmed by the human impacts that have physically remade much of the planet’s landscape and changed the chemistry of its air and water, its inhabitants find themselves in a predicament of multiple and overlapping environmental stresses that have pushed Earth into a new geological epoch.1 Unlike the Holocene, which began with the end of the last Ice Age approximately 11,700 years ago, the Anthropocene is of a much more recent provenance. Some scientists have argued for the significance of earlier human impacts such as the advent of fire or agriculture and others point to the transformations in nature use since the start of industrialization in Europe and North America in the nineteenth century. But the most popular proposal to date the start of the Anthropocene demarks the exponential explosion of anthropocentric pressures since the Second World War. This dating makes it coterminous with another novel notion of environmental studies—the Great Acceleration.2 From a scientific standpoint, the concept of the Anthropocene has rapidly gained ground in the twenty-first century. It has gone from an ad-hoc notion bandied about in a conference presentation by renowned chemist Paul Crutzen to a proposal by a working group of the International Commission on