October saw the first meeting of the Anthropocene Working Group, the International Commission on Stratigraphy body in charge of examining whether humans have impacted the Earth significantly enough to merit defining a new geological epoch, an era of humanity’s own making. In this issue of GeoQ, dedicated to The Anthropocene, the Anthropocene Working Group writes a report on the outcome of that meeting, including future steps being taken to formalise the Anthropocene epoch (see External News). This issue also features articles on interesting research related to the different ways in which humans are affecting the Earth’s systems, as well as a contribution from the EGU President about new thinking, data and models for doing geosciences in the Anthropocene (EGU Voice).

Please note that this is the last issue of GeoQ, as we are changing the quarterly PDF newsletter format from January onwards. To inform our members about EGU activities on a more regular basis, we are introducing a shorter email newsletter, which we will send out every month from 2015 onwards.

You can download the full newsletter as a single (interactive) PDF, or follow the Table of Contents links below for the PDFs of each individual section.

Table of Contents

• Editorial
• Articles
  
  • Ecosystem engineering: how the Suez Canal changed the sea – 5
  • The Amazon and the Anthropocene – 6
  • No black-and-white issue: how dark aerosols affect the icy heights of the Himalayas – 7
• EGU Voice
  
  • Letter from the EGU President – 9
  • Division reports – 10
• EGU News
  
  • EGU announces 2015 awards and medals – 12
  • EGU 2015: call for papers open until early January – 13
  • Open access: access to knowledge – 13
• Press Releases
  
  • Highs and lows: height changes in the ice sheets mapped – 15
• Journal Watch
  
  • Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics (ACP) – 16
  • Atmospheric Measurement Techniques (AMT) – 17
  • Biogeosciences (BG) – 17
  • Climate of the Past (CP) – 18
  • Earth System Dynamics (ESD) – 18
  • Geoscientific Instrumentation, Methods and Data Systems (GI) – 18
  • Geoscientific Model Development (GMD) – 19
  • Hydrology and Earth System Sciences (HESS) – 20
  • Natural Hazards and Earth System Sciences (NHESS) – 20
  • Ocean Science (OS) – 20
  • The Cryosphere (TC) – 21
• External News
  
  • The Anthropocene: an update – 22
• Education
  
  • Planet Press: EGU news for children! – 23
• Young Scientists
  
  • Interview with Nick Dunstone, an outstanding young scientist – 24
• Books
  
  • Integrated Geophysical Models – 26
  • Principles of Seismic Velocities and Time-to-Depth Conversion – 26
  • Full waveform inversion in an anisotropic world – 27
  • Source Mechanisms of Earthquakes – 27
  • Book review: The Finite-Difference Modelling of Earthquake Motions – 28
  • Book review: Water Resilience for Human Prosperity – 29
  • Book review: Extreme Natural Hazards, Disaster Risks and Societal Implications – 30
• Events
  
  • Conferences, meetings and workshops – 31