How much have humans changed the Earth? An international research team including a KAIST researcher has proposed a common framework for defining the meaning and starting point of the "Anthropocene," a period in which human activities have rapidly transformed the global environment. The researchers propose using 1952 as a reference point to distinguish the relatively stable Earth environment before that year from the rapid changes that followed, allowing the scale and speed of today's environmental crisis to be understood more accurately.
KAIST (President Choongsik Bae) announced on October 16 Buhm Soon Park, Endowed Chair Professor of the STP and Director of the Center for Anthropocene Studies, published a paper with an international research team proposing a definition of the Anthropocene and future directions for its research and application.
The Anthropocene is a concept used to describe an epoch in which human activities have become powerful enough to affect the Earth's environment as a whole, including the climate and ecosystems. Over the past two decades, the concept has spread beyond the natural sciences into the humanities and social sciences, education, and the arts, but differing interpretations of its meaning and starting point have continued.
A proposal to formally recognize the Anthropocene as an official geological epoch was not approved in 2024. Nevertheless, the concept continues to be widely used across academic and social fields to describe the impact of human activities on the global environment. Against this background, the new paper seeks to establish a more consistent understanding of the Anthropocene and proposes research directions that can be applied across disciplines.
The researchers pointed out that if the Anthropocene is broadly defined simply as "the period in which humans affected the environment," it becomes difficult to distinguish how the rapid changes occurring in recent decades differ from earlier human impacts. Humans have altered the environment for a long time, but the researchers argue that particular attention should be paid to the fact that, since the mid-20th century, the scale of human influence has grown large enough to destabilize the Earth system as a whole.
The point of comparison is the Holocene, which has lasted for approximately 12,000 years. The relatively stable climate and environmental conditions of the Holocene, which began after the last Ice Age, enabled humans to develop agriculture, cities, and civilizations. The researchers emphasized that identifying the point at which this stability began to be significantly disrupted is necessary to assess more clearly how rapidly and extensively the Earth's environment is changing today.
Accordingly, the research team proposes 1952 as the starting point of the Anthropocene. This coincides with the period of the "Great Acceleration," when industrialization and urbanization expanded rapidly in the mid-20th century and numerous indicators of human activity and the global environment began changing sharply.
By clearly defining the starting point and meaning of the Anthropocene in this way, researchers and policymakers from different fields can compare and discuss global environmental changes using a common reference point. The research team explained that the Anthropocene could serve as a shared language connecting the natural sciences with the humanities and social sciences, while also helping improve understanding of and responses to environmental crises in areas such as policy, international law, and education.
Professor Buhm Soon Park said, "The Anthropocene is a common language for understanding how rapidly and extensively humans are changing the Earth," adding, "By clarifying its meaning and criteria, we can compare changes in the global environment more accurately and discuss together how we should respond." He continued, "I hope this paper will provide an opportunity to connect diverse fields such as science, policy, education, and the arts in responding collectively to environmental crises."
The paper involved international scholars from a wide range of disciplines, including Professor Jan Zalasiewicz of the University of Leicester in the United Kingdom, co-chair of the Anthropocene Working Group; Professor Julia Adeney Thomas of the University of Notre Dame in the United States; and Professor Jürgen Renn of the Max Planck Institute of Geoanthropology in Germany.
The paper was published on September 8, 2026, as part of a special collection titled "The Anthropocene debate" in the international journal Nature Reviews Earth & Environment. The collection presents a range of academic perspectives on the definition of the Anthropocene and the debate over whether it should be formally recognized as a geological epoch.
※ Paper title: Future directions for Anthropocene research and its applications, DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s43017-026-00820-z , Article type: Perspective (an article presenting an academic viewpoint and future research directions)
Professor Buhm Soon Park established the Center for Anthropocene Studies in 2018 and has continued research and public discussion on the Anthropocene through publications and translations, lectures, exhibition consulting, and academic conferences. More recently, he has been conducting a research project entitled "A Study of the Great Acceleration in the Anthropocene" through the Global Humanities and Social Sciences Convergence Research Support Program of the National Research Foundation of Korea.
