AWG Mississippi Essays
Fostering their long-standing cooperation with Haus der Kulturen der Welt (HKW) and the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science (MPIWG) the international Anthropocene Working Group (AWG) joined the project Mississippi. An Anthropocene River, contributing geoscientific expertise and holding their first meeting outside of Europe (immediately prior to the Anthropocene River Campus in New Orleans). The AWG is an interdisciplinary group of geologists, Earth system scientists, historians, and scholars of law tasked with collecting stratigraphic evidence for the Anthropocene as a new geological epoch. Collected here is a selection of essays from members of the AWG discussing some of the crucial aspects that make the Mississippi River an icon of global Anthropocene transformations.
- contributionCatherine Russell, Colin Waters, Mark Williams, Jan Zalasiewicz
The Four-Dimensional Mississippi
How did the Mississippi River become both cause and register of anthropocenic changes and what do these changes reveal about the Mississippi’s future?
Reflection, Deep time, Time, History, Topology, Sedimentation, Water, Climate change
- contributionPeter K. Haff
The Technosphere and the Mississippi River
How has the technosphere come to shape the Mississippi in its current formation? An excurse by geologist Peter K. Haff
Infrastructure, Technosphere, Network, Human-environment relations, Agency
- contributionIrka Hajdas
Weldon Spring—A Witness to the Dark History of Science
Since its discovery, perspectives on radioactivity have changed drastically through time. In this piece, physicist Irka Hajdas takes a look into the nuclear past of Weldon Spring, Missouri.
Radioactivity, History, Waste, Energy
- contributionColin Waters
The Mississippi River Provides Insights into the World of More than 300 Million Years Ago
“Some 300 billion metric tons of coal has been mined globally during the Anthropocene.” An excursion into the orginis of coal by geologist Colin Waters
Scale, Deep time, Time, Spatial, Mining, Carbon
- contributionAgnieszka Gałuszka
Environmental Geochemistry of River Sediments
What do the layers of river sedimentation reveal about the human impact on the Mississippi river system?
Case Study, Field Work, Sedimentation, Water, Human-environment relations, Stratigraphy, Geochemistry
- contributionAndrew Gustin, Temporary continent.
Enter Anthropocene: Searching for signal in New Orleans
Despite this quest to identify a formally recognized boundary, perhaps uncertainty is the most effective means of furthering societal recognition of the complexities of human impact.
Conversation, Reflection, Field Work, Stratigraphy, Deep time, Complexity, Human-environment relations, Sedimentation
- contributionSimon Turner
Shifting Sands or Set in Stone?
Simon Turner reflects on the International Chronostratigraphic Chart as both a continual work in progress and a product of centuries of scientific consensus-building.
Consensus Building, Engagement, Field Work, Mapping, Big data, Holocene, Calculation, Consensus, Landscape, History
