Abstract The Indian subcontinent today houses about one-third of the global population and is one of the most vulnerable regions to future climate variability. This region has seen changes in civilizations, kingdoms and more recently political regimes, that were intricately linked to the changing environment over the mid–late Holocene. A comparative analysis of human–environment interaction within different regions at different time scales of the Quaternary is, however, lacking. In this paper we discuss the human–environment interactions taking case studies from two diverse time periods and geographically different regions from the Indian subcontinent. First, we review and analyse the role of environmental change in the evolution of Indus civilization on the northwestern Indian subcontinent during the mid–late Holocene and secondly, we discuss the role of both the anthropogenic activities and environmental change during the Anthropocene in shaping up the Bengal Delta. Overall, during the mid–late Holocene, Indus cultural transformations were driven by natural environmental changes, whereas the anthropogenic activities in the last few centuries have modified the Bengal deltaic landscape, which has intensified the impacts of natural disasters – in both cases a change in socio-political scenarios occurred. Such studies can be used as benchmarks to understand the future response of societies to environmental changes.

Abstract A complexity is emphasized in the distribution of French archaeomagnetic directions during the thirteenth and the fourteenth centuries AD. Data uncertainties, and the smoothing introduced when estimating an average secular variation curve, prevent scrutiny of the very nature of this complexity. It might correspond to a directional yaw, the nature of which would be compatible with the recent geomagnetic field evolution as traced by the gufm1 model. In order to emphasize this indeterminacy, a reference secular variation curve was constructed for dates between AD 1000 and 1500, including the yaw in question, and synthetic databases that mimic the accuracy and density characteristics of the true French archaeomagnetic database were considered for some of these. The synthetic curves hence obtained show that the dating accuracy of archaeomagnetic data is the crucial parameter for constructing a detailed secular variation path. The significant impact of the experimental data accuracy is also illustrated. Even more crucial is the fact that the precision of the data dating required to describe the directional variability over the century timescale largely exceeds the precision of the archaeological dates available for the structures generally studied. This highlights the intrinsic limitation of archaeomagnetism for regional reconstruction of century-scale geomagnetic field variations.

Abstract A relative palaeointensity determination was obtained using the pseudo-Thellier technique on sediment from Ther, Tirna Basin, Latu-Osmanabad District, Maharashtra, India. The stability of the natural remanent magnetization was investigated by alternating field (AF) demagnetization. Rock magnetic studies suggest that the main carriers of magnetization are ferrimagnetic minerals, predominantly pseudo-single-domain magnetite. To varying degrees, the smoothed palaeoinclination and palaeodeclination patterns of the Tirna Basin are similar to other Asian palaeosecular variation records CALS3k.4, CALS10k.1 and SED3k.1, with an age offset. Measurements of intensity of the natural remanent magnetization left after AF demagnetization v. intensity of anhysteric remanent magnetization gained at the same peak were carried out on a set of samples. A jackknife re-sampling scheme provides error estimates for the palaeointensity. A good agreement pattern can be observed between the Tirna Basin relative palaeointensity proxy and other global curves with an age shift. Although some temporal offsets of palaeointensity features between different records have been recognized, their similar shape suggests that the palaeointensity can give a globally coherent signal and may be used as a relative dating technique. For the first time, relative palaeointensity data for the past 2 kyr from India is presented here, which complement the existing archaeological records but with an additional input.

Abstract A strong and potentially dangerous decreasing trend in the level of water in Vrana Lake over the last three decades was analysed. This freshwater lake is a unique karst hydrology feature located on the small Adriatic island of Cres (405.71 km 2 ), which is entirely composed of carbonate rocks. The lake is situated in a large cryptodepression and its base reaches a depth of 61.3 m below mean sea-level. The lake is a complex hydrological–hydrogeological system with an average water volume of c. 220 × 10 6 m 3 . The larger geographical region has been affected by an increase in air temperature over the last c. 40 years. This exceptionally clean freshwater lake is the only source of potable water for the whole Cres archipelago. A dangerous drop in the water level of the lake started in 1983. This decreasing trend is driven by both global climate change and anthropogenic (the overexploitation of water) factors.

Abstract Sinkholes are the main hazard related to underground voids of both natural and anthropogenic origin. Instabilities developing underground may propagate upwards in a dramatic manner and reach the surface in the form of a sinkhole. The Apulia region in southern Italy is an interesting case study due to the outcropping of soluble rocks throughout the region. These rocks are affected by karst processes and have a high number of anthropogenic cavities. The latter were excavated by humans at different times for a variety of purposes. The worrying recent increase in the number of sinkhole events registered in Apulia led us to collect information on natural and anthropogenic sinkholes in Apulia. We focused on anthropogenic cavities, mostly excavated in Plio-Pleistocene calcarenites, and characterized the rock masses before using two- and three-dimensional parametric numerical analyses to model the instability processes, with the aim of exploring the failure mechanisms that lead to the occurrence of sinkholes. The parametric studies allowed us to carry out a preliminary evaluation of the stability conditions through simple charts designed for use in the field.

For hundreds of millions of years, nature has governed the biogeochemical cycles that have shaped the diverse geology and biology of Earth, but now, within a few kilometers of the surface, where the cycles are most complex, humans are mining and redistributing material at such a rapid rate that many elements of the periodic table are already in crucially short supply, or they are under threat to become so in the next few decades. It is not just water and fossil fuels that are affected by our consumption. Top-down and bottom-up analyses make clear that many of the accessible elemental resources of our future are now largely aboveground, stored in the familiar objects of our daily lives. In order to maintain supply lines to industry and to the dinner table, and to preserve our place in the biosphere, biogeochemical cycles must produce as much useful resource as they consume. Doing so will require cross-disciplinary scientists, designers, social communities, and visionary entrepreneurs working together to completely reframe our concepts of mining, consumption, human environments, and waste.

Abstract Ice could play a role in identifying and defining the Anthropocene. The recurrence of northern hemisphere glaciation and the stability of the Greenland Ice Sheet are both potentially vulnerable to human impact on the environment. However, only a very long hiatus in either would be unusual in the context of the Quaternary Period, requiring the definition of a geological boundary. Human influence can clearly be discerned in several ice-core measurements. These include a sharp boundary in radioactivity due to atmospheric nuclear testing; increases, unprecedented at least in the Holocene, in Greenland concentrations of sulphate, nitrate and metals such as lead; the appearance in ice-core air bubbles of previously undetectable compounds such as SF 6 ; and the rise, unprecedented in the last 800 ka, in concentrations of carbon dioxide and methane. Some combination of these changes could be used by future generations to clearly identify the onset of a new epoch defined at a particular calendar date. However, it is not yet clear what the character of the fully developed Anthropocene will be, and it might be wise to let future generations decide, with hindsight, when the Anthropocene started, acknowledging only that we are in the transition towards it.

Abstract Humankind has pervasively influenced the Earth’s atmosphere, biosphere, geosphere, hydrosphere and cryosphere, arguably to the point of fashioning a new geological epoch, the Anthropocene. To constrain the Anthropocene as a potential formal unit within the Geological Time Scale, a spectrum of indicators of anthropogenically-induced environmental change is considered, and shown as stratigraphical signals that may be used to characterize an Anthropocene unit, and to recognize its base. This volume describes a range of evidence that may help to define this potential new time unit and details key signatures that could be used in its definition. These signatures include lithostratigraphical (novel deposits, minerals and mineral magnetism), biostratigraphical (macro- and micro-palaeontological successions and human-induced trace fossils) and chemostratigraphical (organic, inorganic and radiogenic signatures in deposits, speleothems and ice and volcanic eruptions). We include, finally, the suggestion that humans have created a further sphere, the technosphere, that drives global change.

Over the past 50 years, geoscience education has evolved in a number of important ways in terms of what we teach, whom we teach, and how we teach. What we teach has changed focus from traditional geology to the geosciences more broadly defined, including the significant impact of Earth processes on a burgeoning world population and the impacts of that population on the Earth. The importance of the geosciences to decisions critical to our human future is incorporated into courses, textbooks, and curricula. Although preparation of a professional geologic workforce is still an important focus of geoscience education, geoscience literacy to enable all citizens to make informed decisions related to geoscience topics has become an important goal underpinned by national policy documents. What remains a challenge is that we still fail to reach the vast majority of future citizens with geoscience education at the high school and college levels. How we teach has also changed. Although great teaching and strategies for effective teaching are not new, what has developed over the past 50 years is the cognitive science and pedagogical research that validates best practice and supports broad reform in geoscience education. The past 15 years have seen a widespread rise at the undergraduate level in interest in effective teaching, along with increased use of active learning strategies, research-based best practices, real-world data, and authentic assessment. Changes in how undergraduate geoscience is taught have been critically catalyzed by development of a community of practice and supported by advances in technology.