Anthromes
Context
Erle C. Ellis:
"Human use of land for agriculture and settlements — the key social-ecological infrastructures that sustain humanity — has already transformed more than three-quarters of the terrestrial biosphere into anthropogenic biomes, or anthromes , yielding a host of novel ecologies characterized by their sustained direct interactions with human populations and infrastructures in the forms of crops, pastures, built structures, and other used lands [Figure 01].06 This profound and permanent transformation of Earth’s ecology together with anthropogenic global changes in climate, hydrology, element cycling, biodiversity, and other environmental processes has recently led scientists to recognize the emergence of human systems as a global force transforming the Earth system and the beginning of a new epoch of geologic time, the Anthropocene.