Joe Carlin, of Cal State Fullerton, will give a talk at Speakers Club on Thursday, November 5 at 2:00 PM in Webb Hall 1100.  The title of his talk is Creating the Geologic Record in the Anthropocene: Investigations of Ocean and Terrestrial Changes due Natural and Human-Induced Events Preserved in Marine Sediments.

The Anthropocene has been proposed as a new geological epoch, founded in the idea humans now significantly influence many of Earth’s key processes, and thus can now be thought of agents of geological change.  As a result, for the first time in Earth’s history the geologic record is going to reflect the interplay of both natural processes and human activities.  For shallow marine and coastal environments, those sediments may preserve changes within the ocean and proximal terrestrial systems.  This presentation will focus on recent research investigating how environmental changes resulting from natural processes and anthropogenic activity over relatively short geological time scales are reflected within the coastal sediment record.  Investigating these changes on decadal time scales or less will offer insights into the formation of the geologic record for the Anthropocene, and add to our predictive capabilities for future changes.