Title: Societal impacts on the Earth System - from the past towards the future

Authors: Nathalie Dubois¹ & the Human Traces WG Steering Committee

Affiliations:
¹ Department of Surfaces Waters Research + Management, Eawag, Dübendorf, Switzerland
Department of Earth Sciences, ETHZ, Zürich, Switzerland

Abstract: Society has become a key component of the Earth system in the last Century, modifying the atmosphere, oceans, cryosphere, land surface, and biosphere. But the interactions between human societies and the environment have a long, complex history spanning many millennia. Stratigraphic archives but also archeological sites and societal archives such as those investigated by the CRIAS working group serve as long-term records of natural variability and human-induced changes to the Earth system, allowing us to get an integrated understanding of Earth system dynamics which includes anthropogenic drivers and societal responses to change on various timescales.
The PAGES Human Traces working group aims to place contemporary anthropogenic impacts in a long-term, global perspective by synthesizing existing records of human traces, when possible, from different archives. Our first supra regional synthesis in Latin America involved for instance not only paleolimnologists, but also archeologists and anthropologists. Our first global synthesis, on the other hand, focusses on the record of lead (Pb) pollution in stratigraphic archives around the globe. In this presentation I will highlight key findings from these efforts and suggest ways forward to achieve a truly global synthesis of the long legacy of human impacts.
An integrated understanding of Earth system dynamics is critical to navigating towards a sustainable future. Therefore, quantifying both natural variability and the slow-evolving, low-intensity pre-Anthropocene human perturbations is essential if we are to improve predictions of future environmental dynamics and inform strategies for sustainability. These also serve as a way of defining reference conditions for ecosystem management and conservation by providing a longer-term perspective for recent global changes in the context of the Anthropocene.

Biography: Nathalie Dubois is a paleolimnologist who’s research focusses on the human-environment-climate nexus. She is a Group Leader at Eawag, the Swiss Institute for Aquatic Science and Technology and an Adjunct Professor at ETH Zurich, with collaborations around the World. A paleoceanographer and paleoclimatologist by training, she is the current President of the Commission for Oceanography and Limnology of the Swiss Academy of Sciences. She was an active member of the former PAGES Aquatic Transition working group, and is now leading the Human Traces working group. Her research interests include the development of freshwater paleothermometers, but focus mainly on anthropogenic impacts in lakes and swamps, from detecting early human traces in Oceania, to assessing the impact of soil erosion in the Roman Era or Industrial Pollution in the 20st Century.