International Commission On Stratigraphy

International Commission On Stratigraphy

Subject: Science & Tech

Context- Humans will be the first to have a new geological epoch named after the species — an unfortunate event denotative of our irreversible impact on the planet’s ecosystems

Concept –

• The Anthropocene Epoch is an unofficial unit of geologic time, used to describe the most recent period in Earth’s history when human activity started to have a significant impact on the planet’s climate and ecosystems.
• The word Anthropocene is derived from the Greek words anthropo, for “man,” and cene for “new,” coined and made popular by biologist Eugene Stormer and chemist Paul Crutzen in 2000.
• Scientists still debate whether the Anthropocene is different from the Holocene, and the term has not been formally adopted by the International Union of Geological Sciences (IUGS), the international organization that names and defines epochs.
  • The primary question that the IUGS needs to answer before declaring the Anthropocene an epoch is if humans have changed the Earth system to the point that it is reflected in the rock strata.
• A popular theory is that it began at the start of the Industrial Revolution of the 1800s, when human activity had a great impact on carbon and methane in Earth’s atmosphere.
• Others think that the beginning of the Anthropocene should be 1945. This is when humans tested the first atomic bomb, and then dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan. The resulting radioactive particles were detected in soil samples globally.

Geologic Time Scale

• Earth’s history is divided into a hierarchical series of smaller chunks of time, referred to as the geologic time scale. These divisions, in descending length of time, are called eons, eras, periods, epochs, and ages.
• These units are classified based on Earth’s rock layers, or strata, and the fossils found within them. From examining these fossils, scientists know that certain organisms are characteristic of certain parts of the geologic record. The study of this correlation is called
• Officially, the current epoch is called the Holocene, which began 11,700 years ago after the last major ice age.

International Union of Geological Sciences (IUGS)

• The International Union of Geological Sciences (IUGS) is an international non-governmental organization devoted to international cooperation in the field of geology.
• The International Union of Geological Sciences (IUGS), founded in 1961, with 121 national members, representing over a million geoscientists, is one of the World’s largest scientific organizations.
• It encourages international co-operation and participation in the Earth sciences in relation to human welfare and is a member of the International Science Council (ISC).
• Membership is open to countries or defined regions.

International Commission on Stratigraphy

• The International Commission on Stratigraphy (ICS), sometimes referred to unofficially as the “International Stratigraphic Commission”, is a daughter or major subcommittee grade scientific daughter organization that concerns itself with stratigraphical, geological, and geochronological matters on a global scale.
• It is the largest and oldest subordinate body of the International Union of Geological Sciences (IUGS).
• The ICS is essentially a permanent working subcommittee, which meets far more regularly than the quadrennial meetings scheduled by the IUGS, when it meets as a congress or membership of the whole.
• It is the official keeper of geologic time, i.e. it precisely defines units (periods, epochs, and age) of the Geologic Time Scale.
• The International Commission on Stratigraphy (ICS) is the largest and oldest scientific body in the International Union of Geological Sciences (IUGS).
• It is the official keeper of geologic time, i.e. it precisely defines units (periods, epochs, and age) of the Geologic Time Scale.

What is Geological Time Scale?

• Geologists divide the 4.6-billion-year existence of Earth into slices of time such as Eon, Era, System/Period, Series/Epoch, and Stage/Age.
• Eons are divided into Eras, Eras into Periods, Periods into Epochs, and Epochs into Ages.
• Each slice corresponds to significant happenings – such as the break-up of continents, dramatic shifts in climate, and even the emergence of particular types of animals and plant life