Geography 139: Global Environmental Issues
Assignment 2: The Anthropocene
This week we are exploring the Anthropocene or “age of humans”, which is the
concept that we are now in a new geologic era driven by humans.
1) Read the assigned articles and view the National Geographic images.
2)
The readings discuss various aspects of the Anthropocene, raising different
issues in defining it, and in the consequences of using it as a term.
From the
readings, discuss the usefulness of, and problems with, using the Anthropocene
as a term in analyzing the human impact on the Earth (~200 words)
3)
Using the posted National Geographic image collection as prompts and
inspiration, find an image yourself to that illustrates something important about
the concept of the Anthropocene (from the perspectives of any of the articles).
You can also select a photo/image that you have taken or created yourself.
Write
a short response to the following question:
How does the image succeed or fail
(or both) at illustrating the idea of the Anthropocene?
(~200 words).
