Anthropocene and Climate Change

This article explores the concept of Anthropocene and its relation to climate change. It also discusses the impact of climate change on the Toronto ravine system, which is one of the greatest urban ecosystems in the world. The article highlights the stressors that climate change has caused on urban trees and the urgent need for extra resources to secure and widen the urban forest.

Running head: ANTHROPOCENE AND CLIMATE CHANGE
Anthropocene and Climate Change
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Author Note

1ANTHROPOCENE AND CLIMATE CHANGE
Understanding how climate change is related to Anthropocene and ways it affects
Toronto ravine system:
Climate change and Anthropocene:
The concept of Anthropocene was introduced by Eugene Stoermer and Paul Crutzen in 2000.
This refers to the ever rising effects of human population on earth. As per the vivid expression of
popular and scientific literatures, the current world is facing a significant environmental change due
to humans. The Anthropocene refers to the completely new approach, characterized by human
driven physical, chemical and biological change this planet’s system. The climate change is never an
isolated challenge that can be routinely resolved by various existing institutions. This is a part of the
shift from the phase of exponential growth. This has occurred on the biosphere to the latest
unchartered phase (Trexler, 2015).
Figure 1: “Temperate biodiversity and complex response to climate change”

2ANTHROPOCENE AND CLIMATE CHANGE
(Source: Whyte, 2017, pp.153-162)
The climate change has wreaked havoc in terms of many aspects. It is seen that about one-
fourth of the chemical energy generated by plants are utilized by human beings. Further, the rate at
which the species are getting extinct is up to thousand times the common background rate. Next, the
population of ocean fish have declined mostly since 1950. Moreover, the human beings are inhaling
more nitrogen from atmosphere. It is converted to the nitrates than every other combined processes.
Nine times more than the natural background rate, the phosphorous has a harmful chemical is
flowing into vast ocean. Here, eutrophication has generated about 400 zones up to 70,000 square
kilometers of area that are declared dead. Besides, erosions taking place from the prior plowed
agricultural lands are increased 100 times than the conventional natural background rate (Reinmuth-
Selzle et al., 2017).
Climate change and Toronto ravine system:
The Toronto ravine is one of the greatest urban ecosystems of the world. This covers about
17% of the area of Toronto including the overall area of over 27,000 acres (Ashmore, 2018). Further,
it offers the 2.8 million of its citizens with the scope to enjoy nature. This is the primary source of
habitat for the terrestrial biodiversity of Toronto. They delivers billions of dollar services for the
ecosystem.
The climate changes has already started to exacerbate stressors over urban tress and include
urgency of necessities for extra resources. This is to secure and widen the urban forest. Furthermore,
the change has led to hotter summers stressing on newly planted trees. This raises the requirements
for watering. It has intended to result in more amount of variable precipitation. This makes it more
complicated to depend on rainfalls for providing necessities of water for the trees. Again milder
winters allows proliferation of insect pests and warmth of mid-winter spells results in budburst. This

3ANTHROPOCENE AND CLIMATE CHANGE
is followed by freezing that harms growth (Kabigting, 2018). Besides, concentration of ground level
ozone is also intended to rise with the onset of hot summers and damaging leaves. Additionally,
growing seasons, higher wind velocities and freezing rains are leading to migration of plants and
tress northward. Intense rainfall in frequent episodes is damaging trees.

4ANTHROPOCENE AND CLIMATE CHANGE
References:
Ashmore, P. (2018). Transforming Toronto’s Rivers: A Socio-Geomorphic Perspective. In The
Palgrave Handbook of Critical Physical Geography (pp. 485-511). Palgrave Macmillan,
Cham.
Kabigting, J. M. (2018). Assessing Understory Vegetation Communities as Indicators of Ecological
Integrity in the Toronto Ravine System.
Reinmuth-Selzle, K., Kampf, C. J., Lucas, K., Lang-Yona, N., Fröhlich-Nowoisky, J., Shiraiwa,
M., ... & Ziegler, K. (2017). Air pollution and climate change effects on allergies in the
anthropocene: abundance, interaction, and modification of allergens and adjuvants.
Environmental science & technology, 51(8), 4119-4141.
Trexler, A. (2015). Anthropocene fictions: the novel in a time of climate change. University of
Virginia Press.
Whyte, K. (2017). Indigenous climate change studies: Indigenizing futures, decolonizing the
Anthropocene. English Language Notes, 55(1), 153-162.