Humans are the most significant global geomorphological driving force of the 21st century

Abstract

The transformation of the Earth's land surface by mineral extraction and construction is on a scale greater than natural erosive terrestrial geological processes. Mineral extraction statistics can be used as a proxy to measure the size of the total anthropogenic global sediment flux related to mineral extraction and construction. It is demonstrated that the annual direct anthropogenic contribution to the global production of sediment in 2015 was conservatively some 316 Gt (150 km 3 ), a figure more than 24 times greater than the sediment supplied annually by the world's major rivers to the oceans. The major long-term acceleration in anthropogenic sediment flux started just after the Second World War and anthropogenic sediment flux overtook natural fluvial sediment flux in the mid-1950s. Humans are now the major global geological driving force and an important component of earth system processes in landscape evolution. The changing magnitude of anthropogenic sediments and landforms over time are

Urban geomorphology of a historical city straddling the Tanaro River (Alessandria, NW Italy)

“…More than half of the world's population are living in urban areas that generally developed transforming step by step the landscape and destroying the former landforms (Bathrellos, 2007;Cooper et al, 2018;Crutzen, 2002;Gregory, 2006;Ritchie & Roser, 2019;Tarolli & Sofia, 2016;Thornbush & Allen, 2018). As a result, the severe impact of the urban sprawl on the natural environment often triggered difficult relationships of coexistence between urban systems and ever-changing geomorphological processes (Goudie, 2018;Mandarino et al, 2019a), even due to the exacerbation of phenomena most probably associated with climate change (Acquaotta et al, 2018(Acquaotta et al, , 2019Faccini et al, 2018;Witze, 2018).…”

Mining modification of river systems: A case study from the Australian gold rush

“…From these figures it is evident that miners mobilised significant volumes of sediment. This demonstrates the same trend in anthropogenic overburden production recently described by Cooper et al () but places it several decades earlier than their analysis begins. In an era before the widespread use of the internal combustion engine, the effective harnessing of water as a motive force was central to earth‐moving at this scale.…”

Meteorological Macro-Imagineering: A Re-plumbed Freshwater Supply System for the USA’s Southwest? (Macro-Imagenharia Meteorológica: Um Sistema de Abastecimento de Água Doce para o Sudoeste dos EUA?)

“…Geoscientist now casually assert "…that the annual direct anthropogenic contribution to the global production of sediment in 2015 was conservatively some…150 km3, a figure more than 24 times greater than the sediment supplied annually by the world's major rivers to the ocean" [30]. Speaking in the fashion of pro-desalination Ecopolis-Macro-Imagineering extremists, the yearly replenishment of an enlarged Salton Sea might eclipse that impressive ocean-sedimentation deposition bulk!…”