Field Guide to the Patchy Anthropocene

Nature has gone feral. How can we re-attune ourselves to the new nature? A field guide can help.

While the global scientific community recently made headlines by ruling the Anthropocene—an era many date to the Industrial Revolution when human action truly began to transform the planet—did not qualify for a geological epoch quite yet, understanding the nature of human transformation of the Earth is more important than ever. The effects of human activity are global in scope, but take shape within distinct social and ecological "patches," discontinuous regions within which the key actors may not be human, but the plants, animals, fungi, viruses, plastics, and chemicals creating our new world. Field Guide to the Patchy Anthropocene takes stock of our current planetary crisis, leading readers through a series of sites, thought experiments, and genre-stretching descriptive practices to nurture a revitalized natural history.

Field guides teach...