An international group of scientists led by the University of Maine (USA) has proposed using the sediment layers at the bottom of Crawford Lake in Canada as a benchmark that marks the beginning of a new geological age – the Anthropocene. The results of the study are presented at. conferences Max Planck Society dedicated to climate.
The Anthropocene is the period when human activity changed the composition of terrestrial rocks so that they can be easily distinguished from ancient sediments. Tropical corals in the US and Australia, peat bogs in the mountains of Poland, the Antarctic ice sheet and human remains in Vienna were seen as possible places for the start of a new era. As a result, scientists chose Crawford Lake, located near Toronto, in Canada.
According to University of Southampton processor Andrew Candy, the presence of plutonium in annual sediment layers at the bottom of Crawford Lake is a clear indication of when humanity began dominating the Earth and leaving a global footprint.
“Plutonium is only found in trace amounts in nature, but in the early 1950s, its worldwide concentration began to rise sharply due to the testing of the first thermonuclear bombs,” he said.
Professor Candy and her colleagues have been systematically searching for the “golden nail” for many years as part of the Anthropocene Working Group (AWG), a panel of the world’s leading geologists, geographers and chemists in 2009. International Commission on Stratigraphy (ICS), to determine the beginning of the Anthropocene. In subsequent years, AWG representatives examined all possible candidates for the role of such a standard.
As part of the study, the study group’s participants agreed that the rock deposits that formed at the bottom of Crawford Lake over the past few millennia were most likely the “golden nail.” In the near future, scientists plan to transfer rock samples obtained from the bottom of the lake to the governing bodies of the International Commission on Stratigraphy. If examples and scientific calculations are approved, the idea of the beginning of the Anthropocene will receive the first official acceptance at the international level.
Formerly MSU scientists establishedthat lakes suffer more from plastic pollution than oceans.