Abstract

‘Anthropocene’ (meaning anthro¯pos ‘human being’ and kainos ‘new’) is a term that has become increasingly widely used since it was first proposed by Paul Crutzen & Eugene Stoermer (2000) to identify the most recent time interval in which many geologically significant processes and conditions have been, and continue to be, profoundly altered by human activities. Processes include changes in erosion and sediment transport resulting from agriculture and urbanisation, and variations in the chemical composition of the atmosphere, oceans and soils, with notable perturbations in element cycling, such as carbon, nitrogen, phosphorus and various metals.