Crawford Lake in Burlington, Ontario and the Anthropocene

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Lecture Description : Although humans have impacted their environment for millennia, it is the fundamental change recorded by indicators of this Great Acceleration in the geologic record that justifies erecting a new interval of geologic time. Rejection of the proposal to define the beginning of the Anthropocene epoch with a ‘golden spike’ in varved sediments from Crawford Lake means that -by strict convention- we are still living in the Holocene– but is this societally relevant? Understanding how our planet functions allows us to make useful projections, and examining the geologic record allows us to predict the consequences of warmth equal or exceeding that of the last interglacial. Formally recognizing that ‘Holocene’ no longer accurately describes our planet by adding a new epoch named after the main agent of change (Anthropos, Greek for human) would highlight the value of Earth Sciences in addressing the existential issues that face humanity in the coming decades.

Biography : Francine McCarthy is a geoscientist whose paleoecological and geoarchaeological research focuses on pollen and the remains of algae and their consumers in ‘pollen slides’. Her (and her students’) research includes recent studies of the intestinal contents of a mastodon found in Nova Scotia, an underwater archeological site in Greece, several sites in the Great Lakes and many small lakes in its drainage basin (including the Experimental Lakes Area of NW Ontario and Lake George, NY), the iconic Walden Pond and the meromictic Sluice Pond in Massachusetts. Her most highly publicised research has been on the varved sediments from Crawford Lake, proposed as the ‘golden spike’ to define the Anthropocene. She embraced the multi/ transdisciplinary nature of the proposed Anthropocene epoch and is a member of the Anthropocene Commons as well as the Anthropocene Working Group. In addition to NSERC funding to support research on ‘The impact of land use at mid-latitudes in eastern North America on the global carbon budget: implications for the Anthropocene’, she is co-recipient of a SSHRC grant entitled: ‘Bomb Pulse: Cultural and Philosophical Readings of Time Signatures in the Anthropocene’, through which she is currently writing a graphic novel. She has presented the results of her research on Crawford Lake in a Ted Talk and at the Vatican, among other venues.