We welcome contributions that elucidate deep history and those that address contemporary processes; we especially invite manuscripts with potential to guide and inform humanity into the future. While Anthropocene emphasizes publication of research and review articles detailing human interactions

with Earth systems, the Journal also provides a forum for engaging global discourse on topics of relevance and interest to the interdisciplinary communities. We therefore seek short essays on topics that include policy and management issues, as well as cultural aspects of bio-physical phenomena. We also welcome communications that debate the merits and timing of the Anthropocene as a proposed geologic epoch. While we encourage these discussions, the Journal will remain neutral in its position with regards to the proposal to name a new epoch within the Geological Time Scale. The title of the journal, Anthropocene, is intended as a

AG-014699 mw broad metaphor to denote human interactions with Earth systems and does not imply endorsement for a new geologic epoch. We are pleased to highlight the first issue of Anthropocene comprising contributed and invited articles reporting studies from different parts of the world and different components of Earth’s systems. The editorial team is committed to producing a quality journal; we look forward to Selleck Ku-0059436 working together with the research communities to facilitate advancement of the science of the Anthropocene. “
“The nature, scale and chronology of alluvial sedimentation is one of the most obvious geological elements in the identification and demarcation of the Anthropocene (sensu Zalasiewicz et al. (2010)) – the proposed geological period during which humans have overwhelmed the ‘forces of nature’ ( Steffen et al., 2007). The geological record is largely composed of sedimentary rocks which reflect both global and regional Earth surface conditions. Although the geological record is dominated by marine Vasopressin Receptor sediments there are substantial intervals of the record where fluvial sediments are common (such as the Permo-Trias and much of the Carboniferous). The constitution of the rock record fundamentally reflects plate tectonics and global climate with the

two being inter-related through spatiotemporal changes in the distribution of land and oceans, astronomical forcing (Croll-Milankovitch cycles) and oceanic feedback loops. However, even marine sediments are the result of a combination of solutional and clastic input both of which are related to climate and Earth surface processes such as chemical weathering and erosion. Geomorphology is therefore an integral part of the rock-cycle and so fundamentally embedded within the Geological record both in the past and today ( Brown, 2008 and Brown et al., 2013). It is in this context that we must consider the role of humans both in the past and under the present increasingly human-driven global climate. Since pioneering work in North America after the dust-bowl of the 1930s by Happ et al.