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CEH Lunch Seminar: The Wood Storks of Lake Somerset: Multispecies Ethnography of the Holocene/Anthropocene Boundary Event

A lunch talk by visiting scholar Zachary Caple

Info about event

Time

Tuesday 20 August 2019,  at 12:00 - 13:30

Location

Nobelparken 1451-216

This talk argues that the Holocene/Anthropocene planetary transition rather than “the Anthropocene” best describes the geologic now. This transition must be understood at many scales, including the scale of landscapes and regions. Landscapes are sites where global processes of environment change and the lived realities of many species meet. Working at the boundaries of landscape ecology and biogeochemistry, I call on anthropologists to engage what I call craterology: the science of the human asteroid and the blasted landscapes of the Holocene/Anthropocene boundary event. Anchoring this craterology are the wood storks of Lake Somerset. Lake Somerset is an abandoned phosphate mine in Central Florida. Wood storks are an endangered bird and an example of a Holocene fragment––an indigenous element of the pre-industrial ecology that has not been erased in the Anthropocene's creative destruction. In layers of natural-cultural history, Lake Somerset and its wood storks draw us into situated histories of multispecies landscape change in Florida and the planet-shifting force of the phosphate fertilizer industry.

Zachary Caple is a Provost's Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of South Florida. His work investigates human industrialization of the phosphorus cycle and the transformation of multispecies geographies in Florida.

All are welcome to attend. However, if you would like a free sandwich, please email ceh@cas.au.dk and indicate any special dietary needs before 12pm on Thursday, August 15th.