Articles by Erle Ellis
Dear Anthropocene Working Group (about that Comment in Nature)
In the interests of transparency and to clarify that my critique of the Anthropocene formalization process is not a critique of the people of Anthropocene Working Group (AWG) of which I am a member, I’ve decided to …
What Time is it? Early Anthropocene @theAGU & Straw Poll
It was a great week at the American Geophysical Union(AGU) Meeting in San Francisco, especially with the many sessions sponsored by IGBP – the international scientific program that brought you the Anthropocene- as part of …
Anthroecology: A New Synthesis
Why did behaviorally modern humans and no other multicellular species in the history of the Earth gain the capacity to transform an entire planet? Biology alone cannot explain this – Homo sapiens is just another …
Blogging on!
The Human Landscapes Blog is back! Last year, I began an upgrade to WordPress - and got stuck- much harder than expected. More importantly, after starting to use twitter (@erleellis, @ecosynth, @globalyzer), I’d basically stopped blogging.
Yet, I’d been …
On the Passing of a Great Mentor
Roger M. Spanswick, Professor of Plant Biology, chair of my Ph.D. and undergraduate advisor, died on February 12, 2014 at the age of 74.
Roger Spanswick mentored me through some of the biggest transitions in my …
A tale of two planets: The Anthropocene revisited
Is the Anthropocene recent? Defined solely by the accelerating impacts of an industrial society that threatens the future of both humanity and the biosphere (Barnosky et al., 2012, Rockstrom et al., 2009)? A closer look at …
Global tipping points in the terrestrial biosphere?
Is our planet now threatened by rapid global changes caused by human forcing of the terrestrial biosphere past a planetary tipping point? Two different articles in Nature have suggested that the answer may be …
All is not loss: Plant Biodiversity in the Anthropocene
What are we humans doing to biodiversity in the Anthropocene? Causing Earth’s sixth mass extinction? (e.g. Barnosky et al. 2011 and others). How about something completely new to biodiversity on this planet? How about a …
Thinking Systems
As the fate of the Earth system becomes ever more intertwined with human systems, “thinking in systems” has become more essential than ever. I’ve read books on systems theory (e.g. Allen & Hoekstra 1993), but …
Building a Toolbox for Global Thinking
Acting locally: no problem. Thinking globally: big problem! To solve global problems, we need global understanding of local change. Yet no matter how hard we try, it remains extremely difficult to think globally. Even in …
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