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 massive globalization of species leading to the widespre... [More]

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 a refresher is always good, so when I came across Thinking in Systems... [More]

“Large amounts of energy will be required to fuel economic growth, increase standards of living, and lift developing nations out of poverty.” (Brown et al., 2011; see Figure at left).    A key message from Brown et al. in their must-read empirical and theoretical summary of r... [More]

Human populations grow until they overshoot their carrying capacity and collapse. Game over.  Thank you Malthus! (1798; and Ehrlich 1968). Not so fast! There’s something wrong with this story: it almost never happens.   Human populations do collapse – but not because of p... [More]

What kind of biosphere do you want?  Great question!  And great to see it connected with beautiful prize-winning graphics at visualizing.org.  But on thinking further, it seems clearer than ever that the inspiration behind this- the Planetary Boundaries concept, is going completely in... [More]

"So how did the biosphere become anthropogenic anyway?” asked an astute audience member at my 2007 AGU presentation (powerpoint).  I had just given a presentation on my work with Navin Ramankutty demonstrating that human populations and their use of land have reshaped most of the terrestr... [More]

Ecologists are studying the least human parts of the most human ecosystems and the most human parts of the wildest ecosystems while favoring the Temperate zone over the Tropics (Nature News Article by Zoë Corbyn: “Ecologists shun the urban jungle”).  That’s what we’... [More]

Looking for a new view of an old biosphere?  Now, you can buy a wall-sized version of our first Anthropogenic Biomes map over at Maps.com.  The map includes pictures of different anthromes and is based on the paper “Putting people in the map: Anthropogenic Biomes of the World”.... [More]