The onset of the Anthropocene in the strata

Abstract

The review process by the Anthropocene Working Group to select one GSSP site from among nine candidates, including the marine sediments of Beppu Bay, Japan, began around October of last year, and the lake sediment in Crawford Lake, Canada, was finally selected. A Standard Auxiliary Boundary Stratotype site will be announced soon. However, although a boundary age for the onset of the Anthropocene is given by a global marker that can be correlated within a few years, the stratigraphic onset age of the Great Acceleration, which is considered a rationale for the Anthropocene onset, is still unclear. Based on 56 proxy records in marine sediments from Beppu Bay (Kuwae et al., 2023, The Anthropocene Review) and 267 proxy records based solely on globally distributed, varve counting-based age-dated varve sediments, corals, annual rings, and ice cores, this paper will discuss when the precise age of the Great Acceleration is and how the onset of the Anthropocene should be defined stratigraphically.