Fourth Paradigm

Conclusions y the mid-1990s, jim gray had recognized that the next "big data" challenges for database technology would come from science and not from commerce. He also identified the technical challenges that such data-intensive science would pose for scientists and the key role that IT and computer science could play in enabling future scientific discoveries. The term "eScience" was coined in the year 2000 by John Taylor, when he was director general of the UK Research Councils. Taylor had recognized the increasingly important role that IT must play in the collaborative, multidisciplinary, and data-intensive scientific research of the 21st century and used the term eScience to encompass the collection of tools and technologies needed to support such research. In recognition of the UK eScience initiative, Jim Gray called his research group at Microsoft Research the eScience Group, and he set about working with scientists to understand their problems and learn what tools they needed. In his talk to the Computer Science and Telecommunications Board of the U.S. National Research Council in 2007, Jim expanded on his vision of data-intensive science and enumerated seven key areas for action by the funding agencies:

Humans have become such dominant drivers of planetary changes that scientists are now debating the establishment of a new epoch: the Anthropocene. The concept of the Anthropocene has gained rapid visibility, quickly becoming a trademark of 21st century scientific literature. Interestingly, some studies claim that this idea can be traced back to the 19th and 20th centuries, others suggest that this concept is strongly associated with emerging multidisciplinary views of humans as drivers of global environmental change. In this article, we analyse bibliographical data to trace the key 20th century contributions towards the development of this concept in scientific literature. Using data from Web of Science, we identify five historical citation peaks and show that their associated key publications stem both from natural and social sciences, clearly highlighting the multidisciplinary nature of Anthropocene science. With the ongoing debate for a formal definition of the Anthropocene epoch, we argue that a geological definition aligned with the interdisciplinary development of the concept may be the best way to ensure that it remains relevant to the wider scientific community.

The awareness that natural and semi-natural ecosystems provide benefits to human society, which are of great economic, ecological and socio-cultural value, can be dated back to the mid-1960s and early 1970s. More recently, there has been an almost exponential growth in publications on the benefits of natural ecosystems to human society. However, despite the enhancing interest in ecosystem service research, still many open questions remain to fully integrate the ecosystem service concept in landscape research and decision making. The paper aims at providing the state-of-the-art of ecosystem service assessment regarding landscape research and to present a coherent knowledge base for further discussions. First the paper gives an overview of the different ways defining and classifying ecosystem services. Five selected typologies, very common in the literature are discussed in detail. The second main part of this review focuses on quantifying and mapping ecosystem services as well as on the different valuation approaches. As there are still a lot of challenges that have to be faced regarding quantifying, visualising as well as valuing ecosystem services the paper emphasizes the importance of further research, initiatives and projects to improve the implementation of the ecosystem service concept in environmental planning and management at all levels of decision making. To meet all these challenges research effort needs to be conducted side by side to understand underlying relationships and to improve ecological as well as socioeconomic understanding.

This article explores the significance of the “Smart city” concept by reviewing its key components, namely: Internet of Things (IoT), big (urban) data, and urban informatics/analytics, which are discussed against the background of two ongoing trends impacting everyone in the world—the Fourth Paradigm (the digital revolution) and rapid urbanization. China is seen as a great success story in the sense of how urbanization has driven a significant improvement in the economic wellbeing and prosperity of many of its citizens. Chinese expansion has come at a cost, and the question remains concerning the sustainability of the Chinese model. Along with this, the article suggests some of the short comings of the components of the Smart city concept and reflects on the human resource skills that will be required to implement Smart cities in the north. This is contrasted with the piecemeal way in which elements of the Smart city are being implemented in emerging economies. A process that very m...

This review explores landscape science in the proposed age of the Anthropocene and Fourth Paradigm. Both the Anthropocene and the Fourth Paradigm put landscape science to task, due to the severity of landscape challenges. The article aims to link the concepts of the Anthropocene, the Fourth Paradigm and landscape sustainability in the 21st century. Different sources of publications and information were used to analyse, synthesise and explain the state of landscape research. We searched Thomson Reuters Web of Knowledge, Scopus, and Google Scholar for contents on this article's key themes-globalisation, urbanisation, the Anthropocene and the Fourth Paradigm. We argue that globalisation and urbanisation are the key driving forces behind landscape change. These driving forces represent the scales of human impact on landscapes. Landscape science plays a major role in the age of data revolution and unprecedented landscape change. The review suggests that landscape scientists and landscape societies should chart a new course for landscape research to exploit the benefits of data to advance landscape sustainability.

Genomic and environmental sciences represent two poles of scientific data. In the first, highly parallel sequencing facilities generate large quantities of sequence data. In the latter, loosely networked remote and field sensors produce intermittent streams of different data types. Yet both genomic and environmental sciences are said to be moving to data intensive research. This paper explores and contrasts data flow in these two domains in order to better understand how data intensive research is being done. Our case studies are next generation sequencing for genomics and environmental networked sensors.Our objective was to enrich understanding of the ‘intensive’ processes and properties of data intensive research through a ‘sociology’ of data using methods that capture the relational properties of data flows. Our key methodological innovation was the staging of events for practitioners with different kinds of expertise in data intensive research to participate in the collective an...

This review explores landscape science in the proposed age of the Anthropocene and Fourth Paradigm. Both the Anthropocene and the Fourth Paradigm put landscape science to task, due to the severity of landscape challenges. The article aims to link the concepts of the Anthropocene, the Fourth Paradigm and landscape sustainability in the 21st century. Different sources of publications and information were used to analyse, synthesise and explain the state of landscape research. We searched Thomson Reuters Web of Knowledge, Scopus, and Google Scholar for contents on this article's key themes-globalisation, urbanisation, the Anthropocene and the Fourth Paradigm. We argue that globalisation and urbanisation are the key driving forces behind landscape change. These driving forces represent the scales of human impact on landscapes. Landscape science plays a major role in the age of data revolution and unprecedented landscape change. The review suggests that landscape scientists and landscape societies should chart a new course for landscape research to exploit the benefits of data to advance landscape sustainability.

Human activities now play a major, integral and ever-increasing role in the functioning of the Earth System. This fact lies at the heart of the notion of the Anthropocene. Documenting, understanding and responding to the present and future challenges posed by the recent, dramatic changes in the relationship between humans and their environment thus becomes an imperative for human society. This editorial presents the rationale for engaging with the Anthropocene across a wide range of disciplines from engineering and environmental science to the social sciences and humanities. This essentially transdisciplinary engagement requires the establishment of a new journal, The Anthropocene Review, the scope of which is outlined in this editorial.

Human activities now play a major, integral and ever-increasing role in the functioning of the Earth System. This fact lies at the heart of the notion of the Anthropocene. Documenting, understanding and responding to the present and future challenges posed by the recent, dramatic changes in the relationship between humans and their environment thus becomes an imperative for human society. This editorial presents the rationale for engaging with the Anthropocene across a wide range of disciplines from engineering and environmental science to the social sciences and humanities. This essentially transdisciplinary engagement requires the establishment of a new journal, The Anthropocene Review, the scope of which is outlined in this editorial.

After a brief account of the emergence of the Anthropocene idea in the Earth
sciences, I consider the reception of the hypothesis by critical geographers. Having
addressed the issue of who speaks for the Earth we turn to questions of how the
Earth might speak or act through us – bringing us to the work of geographers who
are beginning to experiment with new ways of thinking with and through planetary
processes. This in turn opens up tricky questions about what close conversation with
the geosciences might mean for the urgent task of decolonizing our thinking about
the Earth.

The designation of the Anthropocene formalizes the end of the 11,700-yearlong Holocene and the beginning of a new epoch. In the technical debates governing this transition, the stability of previous disciplinary conventions is under question, and new modes of expression and expertise are solicited to ground answers. In our examination of Anthropocene origin stories, we analyze science communication about geological designations with an emphasis on how internal and external rhetorical processes of casuistic stretching frame the Holocene-Anthropocene transition. We argue that external stretching challenges scientists to distinguish an epoch of previous human influence from one of humans’ environmental impact. The resulting frames of influence-complexity and impact-collapse characterize the Anthropocene’s formalization and offer implications beyond geology. By taking up an analysis of the scientific sources governing this transition, we identify ways that rhetorical scholarship might help navigate the contemporary paradigm debates determining the Anthropocene’s designation.

Genomic and environmental sciences represent two poles of scientific data. In the first, highly parallel sequencing facilities generate large quantities of sequence data. In the latter, loosely networked remote and field sensors produce intermittent streams of different data types. Yet both genomic and environmental sciences are said to be moving to data intensive research. This paper explores and contrasts data flow in these two domains in order to better understand how data intensive research is being done. Our case studies are next generation sequencing for genomics and environmental networked sensors.

Our objective was to enrich understanding of the ‘intensive’ processes and properties of data intensive research through a ‘sociology’ of data using methods that capture the relational properties of data flows. Our key methodological innovation was the staging of events for practitioners with different kinds of expertise in data intensive research to participate in the collective annotation of visual forms. Through such events we built a substantial digital data archive of our own that we then analysed in terms of three traits of data flow: durability, replicability and metrology.

Our findings are that analysing data flow with respect to these three traits provides better insight into how doing data intensive research involves people, infrastructures, practices, things, knowledge and institutions. Collectively, these elements shape the topography of data and condition how it flows. We argue that although much attention is given to phenomena such as the scale, volume and speed of data in data intensive research, these are measures of what we call ‘extensive’ properties rather than intensive ones. Our thesis is that extensive changes, that is to say those that result in non-linear changes in metrics, can be seen to result from intensive changes that bring multiple, disparate flows into confluence.

If extensive shifts in the modalities of data flow do indeed come from the alignment of disparate things, as we suggest, then we advocate the staging of workshops and other events with the purpose of developing the ‘missing’ metrics of data flow.

The paper constitutes a revision of a presentation held at the panel ‘Negotiating the Boundaries of Environmental History: Ideology vs. Matter’ during the 10th Biennial European Society for Environmental History (ESEH) Conference ‘Boundaries in/of Environmental History,’ held in Tallinn, August 21-25.

Much scientific debate has focused on the timing and stratigraphic signatures for the Anthropocene. Here we review the Anthropocene in its original usage and as it has been imported by anthropology in light of evidence for long-term human-environment relationships. Strident debate about the Anthropocene's chronological boundaries arises because its periodization forces an arbitrary break in what is a long-enduring process of human alterations of environments. More importantly, we argue that dividing geologic time based on a " step change " in the global significance of social-environmental processes contravenes the socially differentiated and diachronous character of human-environment relations. The consequences of human actions are not the coordinated synchronous product of a global humanity but rather result from heterogeneous activities rooted in situated sociopolitical contexts that are entangled with environmental transformations at multiple scales. Thus, the Anthropocene periodization, what we term the " Anthropocene divide, " obscures rather than clarifies understandings of human-environmental relationships.

Much scientific debate has focused on the timing and stratigraphic signatures for the Anthropocene. Here we review the Anthropocene in its original usage and as it has been imported by anthropology in light of evidence for long-term human-environment relationships. Strident debate about the Anthropocene's chronological boundaries arises because its periodization forces an arbitrary break in what is a long-enduring process of human alterations of environments. More importantly, we argue that dividing geologic time based on a " step change " in the global significance of social-environmental processes contravenes the socially differentiated and diachronous character of human-environment relations. The consequences of human actions are not the coordinated synchronous product of a global humanity but rather result from heterogeneous activities rooted in situated sociopolitical contexts that are entangled with environmental transformations at multiple scales. Thus, the Anthropocene periodization, what we term the " Anthropocene divide, " obscures rather than clarifies understandings of human-environmental relationships.

Even as it remains an informal term defining the emergence of humans as a force transforming Earth as a system, the Anthropocene is stimulating novel research and discussion across the academy and well beyond. While geography has always been deeply connected with the coupled human–environment paradigm, physical geographer's embrace of the Anthropocene still appears lukewarm at best. While there are good reasons to hesitate, including the fact that the Anthropocene is not yet, and might never be, formalized in the Geologic Time Scale, physical geographers have much to gain by embracing what is rapidly becoming the most influential scholarly discussion on human–environmental relations in a generation. This editorial was commissioned for the author's debut as Contributing Editor of Progress in Physical Geography.

Although the drive to formally declare a new Anthropocene epoch has gained traction in a number of circles, there are serious questions that need to be raised about the wisdom and accuracy of formalizing the " signals of the anthropocene " as the definitive signs of a new geological epoch. There are important differences between noticing and publicizing a geological signal, and interpreting or defining that signal as the sign of an inevitable 'new normal'. Rather than interpreting troubling signals such as nuclear fallout, changes in the nitrogen cycle and mining tailings as marking the death of the Holocene, I argue that they should be understood and engaged as dire warning signs, demonstrating beyond a doubt the perilous legacies of highly invasive industries, and signaling the unprecedentedly urgent need to terminate and transform harmful practices, and to move our cultures and economies in decidedly Earth-friendly directions.

The word Anthropocene describes a new geological epoch that follows the Holocene epoch. It is the signifier of the period in which people have a devastating and overwhelming impact on the earth and its systems. The Anthropocene also describes the new context in which we are going to have to consider how we should deal with the effects of global anthropogenic ecological change, including how we think about natural resources and energy security. This will require new perspectives on and reimagining orthodox social institutional constructs such as global environmental law and governance, among others, and their ability to successfully mediate the human-environment interface. This article reflects on how we will have to rethink global environmental law and governance as a result of the Anthropocene. It specifically attempts to identify a host of considerations that environmental lawyers, including those who focus on natural resources and energy law, will have to contemplate if global en...

Human activities now play a major, integral and ever-increasing role in the functioning of the Earth System. This fact lies at the heart of the notion of the Anthropocene. Documenting, understanding and responding to the present and future challenges posed by the recent, dramatic changes in the relationship between humans and their environment thus becomes an imperative for human society. This editorial presents the rationale for engaging with the Anthropocene across a wide range of disciplines from engineering and environmental science to the social sciences and humanities. This essentially transdisciplinary engagement requires the establishment of a new journal, The Anthropocene Review, the scope of which is outlined in this editorial.

This review explores landscape science in the proposed age of the Anthropocene and Fourth Paradigm. Both the Anthropocene and the Fourth Paradigm put landscape science to task, due to the severity of landscape challenges. The article aims to link the concepts of the Anthropocene, the Fourth Paradigm and landscape sustainability in the 21st century. Different sources of publications and information were used to analyse, synthesise and explain the state of landscape research. We searched Thomson Reuters Web of Knowledge, Scopus, and Google Scholar for contents on this article's key themes – globalisation, urbanisation, the Anthropocene and the Fourth Paradigm. We argue that globalisation and urbanisation are the key driving forces behind landscape change. These driving forces represent the scales of human impact on landscapes. Landscape science plays a major role in the age of data revolution and unprecedented landscape change. The review suggests that landscape scientists and landscape societies should chart a new course for landscape research to exploit the benefits of data to advance landscape sustainability.