SIU to host leading researcher on humans’ impact on the planet

October 07, 2024

by Tim Crosby

CARBONDALE, Ill. - A Canadian researcher widely lauded for offering the most comprehensive geological evidence of human-caused planetary change will give a talk next week at Southern Illinois University Carbondale.

Francine McCarthy, professor and graduate program director of earth sciences at Brock University in Ontario, will speak on "Finding the Golden Spike and the Onset of the Anthropocene" at 4 p.m. Monday, Oct. 14, at Guyon Auditorium in Morris Library. The event is free and open to the public. A reception beginning at 3 p.m. will precede McCarthy's talk.

McCarthy will present her and her team's work on sediments drawn from Crawford Lake in Ontario, Canada. The sediments of that small lake record history through environmental events and atmospheric pollution, such as industrial expansion and nuclear testing during the Cold War.

"Each layer is distinct from the one that was deposited the year before, like tree rings, so we can actually sample individual years of sediment and measure all sorts of aspects of that sediment to reconstruct what the world was like in 1945 or 1950 or 1955," she said. "And we know that dramatic changes happened in the early 1950s - not just at Crawford Lake, all around the world - but recorded there best."

Canadian Geographic calls her a key mover and shaker in identifying the geological epoch called the Anthropocene, which started in the 1950s.

As a micropaleontologist interested in paleoenvironmental reconstruction, McCarthy has studied small lakes to abyssal marine environments and everything in between, primarily at mid-latitudes in the Northern Hemisphere. She conducts interdisciplinary research with geologists, biologists, geographers and archeologists. She has served as an executive of several organizations, including current membership on the board of the International Association for Great Lakes Research.

McCarthy's presentation is sponsored by the Mid-Mississippi Hub of the Mississippi River Open School, Sigma Xi and the SIU's School of Earth Systems and Sustainability.

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