Related papers: A Physical Framework for the Earth System in the A…
It is proposed, based on the Landau-Ginzburg Theory of phase transitions, that the transition of the Earth System from the stable conditions of the Holocene to the human driven condition of the Anthropocene is, actually, a phase transition,…
We develop a classification scheme for the evolutionary state of planets based on the non-equilibrium thermodynamics of their coupled systems, including the presence of a biosphere and the possibility of what we call an agency-dominated…
Resilience is a property of social, ecological, social-ecological and biophysical systems. It describes the capacity of a system to cope with, adapt to and innovate in response to a changing surrounding. Given the current climate change…
Human activity has an enormous impact on Earth, changing organisms, environments and landscapes, leading to the decline of original ecosystems and irreversible changes that create new combinations of living beings and materials. As a…
The Anthropocene is a proposed time subdivision of the earth's history correlated to the strong human perturbation of the ecosystem. Much debate is ongoing about what date should be considered as the start of the Anthropocene, but much less…
Based on a dynamic systems approach to the Landau-Ginzburg model, a phase space description of the Earth System (ES) in the transition to the Anthropocene is presented. It is shown that, for a finite amount of human-driven change, there is…
We develop a framework within which to conceptualize World-Earth System resilience. Our notion of World-Earth System resilience emphasizes the need to move beyond the basin of attraction notion of resilience as we are not in a basin we can…
It is shown that the Earth System (ES) can, due to the impact of human activities, exhibit chaotic behaviour. Our arguments are based on the assumption that the ES can be described by a Landau-Ginzburg model, which, in itself, predicts that…
The climate system is a forced, dissipative, nonlinear, complex and heterogeneous system that is out of thermodynamic equilibrium. The system exhibits natural variability on many scales of motion, in time as well as space, and it is subject…
Many aspects of anthropogenic global change, such as land cover change, biodiversity loss and the intensification of agricultural production, threaten the natural biosphere. These aspects seem somewhat disjunct and specific so that it is…
The presence and action of humans on Earth has exerted a strong influence on the evolution of the planet over the past $\approx$ 10,000 years, the consequences of which are now becoming broadly evident. Despite a deluge of tightly-focused…
We review some basic issues of the life-prescribed development of the Earth's system and the Earth's atmosphere and discourse the unity of Earth's type of life in physical and transcendental divisions. In physical division, we exemplify and…
Technology is increasingly shaping our social structures and is becoming a driving force in altering human biology. Besides, human activities already proved to have a significant impact on the Earth system which in turn generates complex…
Human influence on the biosphere has been evident at least since the development of widespread agriculture, and some stratigraphers have suggested that the activities of modern civilization indicate a geological epoch transition. The study…
Environmental science almost invariably proposes problems of extreme complexity, typically characterized by strongly nonlinear evolution dynamics. The systems under investigation have many degrees of freedom - which makes them complicated -…
The Anthropocene is characterized by close interdependencies between the natural Earth system and the human society, posing novel challenges to model development. Here we present a conceptual model describing the long-term coevolution of…
A reliable understanding of the Earth system is essential for the life quality of modern society. Natural hazards are the cause of most life and resource losses. The ability to define the conditions for a sustainable development of…
In this work we present a physically motivated planetary Accounting Framework for the Earth System. We show that the impact of the human activity in terms of the Planetary Boundary variables can be accounted for in our Landau-Ginzburg phase…
In the past decades human activities caused global Earth system changes, e.g., climate change or biodiversity loss. Simultaneously, these associated impacts have increased environmental awareness within societies across the globe, thereby…
A perplexing problem in understanding physical reality is why the universe seems comprehensible, and correspondingly why there should exist physical systems capable of comprehending it. In this essay I explore the possibility that rather…